Physician Burnout Statistics 2026

Physician burnout is one of the most documented and consequential problems in U.S. healthcare, and it is getting steady attention from researchers, medical associations, and policymakers. But the data is scattered across annual reports, surveys, and journal studies, which makes it hard to see the full picture in one place.

This page pulls that picture together. Below is a comprehensive, regularly updated collection of physician burnout statistics, drawn from credible sources including the American Medical Association, Medscape’s annual burnout reports, the Commonwealth Fund, and peer-reviewed research. Each statistic is sourced so you can verify it and cite it.

We have organized the data by category: how common burnout is, what drives it, how it differs by specialty and demographic, what it costs, and how it connects to the broader workforce and staffing pressures shaping medicine today. Where relevant, we have included data from our own analysis, the Clinician Support Ratio, which tracks how administrative support staffing has kept pace with the growth of the clinician workforce.

Whether you are a journalist, a researcher, a practice leader, or a clinician trying to understand the scope of the problem, this is meant to be a reliable, current reference. 

Last updated: September 2026.

Table of Contents

Key Physician Burnout Statistics

  • Roughly 41.9% of U.S. physicians report at least one symptom of burnout, and burnout affects approximately half of physicians in practice.
  • Physicians are 82.3% more likely to experience burnout than workers in other U.S. occupations.
  • More than two of five U.S. primary care physicians cite administrative burden as the primary reason for their burnout.
  • Emergency medicine has the highest burnout rate of any specialty at 49.8%, while psychiatry (31.6%) and dermatology (31.5%) are among the lowest.
  • Women physicians experience roughly 27% to 60% higher odds of burnout than their male counterparts.
  • Physician burnout costs the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $4.6 billion each year, driven largely by turnover and reduced clinical hours.
  • Replacing a single physician typically costs between $500,000 and over $1 million.
  • Two in five U.S. physicians (40.3%) say they are likely to reduce their clinical work hours.
  • Between 2012 and 2025, the clinician workforce grew 53% while the administrative support workforce grew only 37%, meaning support staff per clinician fell 10.6%. As administrative support has failed to keep pace with clinician growth, more of that work falls on clinicians, one of burnout’s most-cited drivers.

     

Sources: AMA, American Journal of Medicine, The Commonwealth Fund, Stanford Medicine, American Hospital Association, Ataraxis Clinician Support Ratio


What Is Physician Burnout?

  • Burnout in clinicians is a long-term stress reaction characterized by depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, cynical or negative attitudes toward patients, and a feeling of decreased personal achievement.
  • Burnout in physicians is characterized by emotional exhaustion, finding work no longer meaningful, feelings of ineffectiveness, and a tendency to view patients, students, and colleagues as objects rather than as human beings.
  • Physician burnout is a psychological syndrome in response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. The three key dimensions of this response are overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
  • The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” in the ICD-11, resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

Sources: AMA, NIH, AAFP, WHO


How Physician Burnout Is Measured

  • The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the most widely used and validated tool for measuring burnout. It assesses three core dimensions: emotional exhaustion (feeling drained and depleted by work), depersonalization (developing cynical or detached attitudes toward patients and colleagues), and reduced personal accomplishment (a diminished sense of effectiveness and achievement).
  • A physician generally experiences burnout when they score high on emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, or both. Many large surveys use a simplified single-item or two-item measure derived from the MBI to track burnout at scale, which is why reported figures can vary somewhat depending on the instrument and threshold used.
  • Differences in survey methodology, thresholds, and instruments partly explain why burnout rates reported across sources can range from roughly 40% to over 60%.

Sources: NIH, AMA, peer-reviewed research


How Common Is Physician Burnout?

  • 41.9% of doctors reported at least one symptom of burnout compared with 62.8% in 2021, 38.2% in 2020, 43.9% in 2017, 54.4% in 2014 and 45.5% in 2011.

  • Overall, 43.5% of family physicians reported burnout. Those physicians were more likely to either change practices or stop practicing medicine altogether in the following year compared with those who did not report burnout. 
  • About 42.9% of physicians report a great deal of job stress.
  • Doctors remain 82.3% more likely to experience burnout than workers in other U.S. occupations.
  • Burnout affects approximately one-half of physicians in practice.
  • For 2025, 41.9% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout, down from 43.2% in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023, a continued decline from the peak during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Four of the AMA’s five well-being indicators improved significantly from 2024 to 2025. 
  • Burnout remains unevenly distributed. Hospital-based specialties, including emergency medicine, radiology, and anesthesiology, scored worse than the overall benchmark on three of the five well-being measures, pointing to persistent operational and workflow challenges in those settings.


Sources: Stanford Medicine, CIDRAP, AMA, American Journal of Medicine


Physician Job Satisfaction and Workplace Stress

  • Overall physician job satisfaction reached 77% in 2025, up from 72.1% in 2023 and 67.6% in 2022, a steady recovery from pandemic-era lows.
  • 42.9% of physicians reported a great deal of job stress in 2025, down 2.2 percentage points from the prior year.
  • 56.2% of physicians reported feeling valued by their organization in 2025, up 1.7 percentage points from 2024. That figure varied by gender (59.6% of male physicians versus 53.3% of female physicians) and by career stage.
  • 31.1% of physicians reported an intent to leave their organization within two years in 2025, a slight improvement from the prior year, though nearly one in three physicians is still considering an exit.
  • In a separate 2025 survey of more than 900 practicing physicians, 75% said they feel engaged in their day-to-day work and 73% take pride in being part of their care team, yet far fewer felt supported by their larger organization: only 44% felt their feedback was meaningfully incorporated, and only 40% felt leadership actively sought their input. 

Sources: AMA Organizational Biopsy, CHG Healthcare / Hanover Research


What Causes Physician Burnout?

  • Across all countries, most physicians are dissatisfied with the amount of time they spend on administrative tasks, with more than two of five primary care physicians in the U.S. reporting it as the primary reason for their burnout.
  • For more than two of five burned out primary care physicians in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Switzerland, burnout is primarily because of administrative burden.
  • Administrative support has not kept pace with clinician growth. Between 2012 and 2025, the administrative support workforce grew just 37% while the total clinician workforce grew 53%, meaning support staffing per clinician fell 10.6%. When support staffing does not keep pace, more administrative work falls on the clinician, one of burnout’s most-cited drivers.
  • Total time working is less commonly cited as a contributor to burnout than is time spent on non-clinical tasks. This is not unexpected; the mission of the physician (and their natural tendency) is to care for patients, not spend time explaining the need for a particular drug or test, responding to a billing query or explaining to an insurance company why a colonoscopy is needed. 
  • About one of five primary care physicians in the U.S. report the primary reason for their burnout is feeling undervalued, compared to about one-third in the U.K. and Australia.
  • More after-hours time spent working in EMR charts has been associated with lower satisfaction and higher rates of burnout among primary care physicians and psychiatrists.
  • It’s estimated that U.S. primary care physicians would need to work nearly 27 hours a day to complete all recommended care and administrative tasks, including three hours just to meet clinical documentation requirements.
  • In the U.S., among physicians with burnout, nearly two of five were dissatisfied with their income from their medical practice and the majority were dissatisfied with their daily workload and work–life balance. 
  • The “Big 4” factors known to contribute to stress and burnout include time pressure, especially in patient visits or documentation, lack of control over work environment, chaotic, fast-paced workplaces, culture of the organization, specifically a culture that does not emphasize communication, cohesion, trust, and alignment of values between clinicians and their leaders.
  • The 3 largest factors contributing to burnout among emergency medicine physicians were having too many bureaucratic tasks (51%), a lack of respect from patients (50%), and a lack of respect from administrators/employers, colleagues, or staff (46%).
  • The volume of asynchronous patient messages has become a significant and growing contributor to burnout. The surge in patient portal messaging and unmanageable EHR in-basket volumes adds hours of uncompensated administrative work, much of it completed after clinic hours, and is strongly associated with documentation-driven burnout. 


Sources: The Commonwealth Fund, American Journal of Medicine, Ataraxis Clinician Support Ratio, AMA, Psychiatry Advisor


Physician Burnout by Specialty

  • For the most stressful medical job in 2025, the highest percentages of burnout occurred in nine physician specialties. They are: Emergency medicine: 49.8%, Urological surgery: 49.5%, Hematology/Oncology: 49.3%, Obstetrics and gynecology: 45.7%, Radiology: 45.2%, Family medicine: 45%, General surgery: 43.8%, Cardiology: 43.5%, Gastroenterology: 43.5%.
  • The lowest percentages of burnout occurred in six physician specialties. They are: Infectious diseases: 23.3%, Ophthalmology: 25.8%, Pathology: 28.3%, Nephrology: 29.3%, Dermatology: 31.5%, Psychiatry: 31.6%.
  • Emergency Medicine ranks among the highest-risk specialties, with emergency physicians regularly reporting distress levels above the healthcare average. The unpredictable nature of emergency department work, exposure to trauma, and challenges with patient flow contribute to this elevated risk.
  • Family Medicine and Primary Care physicians face unique pressures from high patient volumes, complex care coordination demands, and administrative documentation requirements. 
  • Obstetrics and Gynecology practitioners face burnout related to unpredictable call schedules, litigation concerns, and the emotional weight of adverse outcomes. 
  • Internal Medicine hospitalists and outpatient internists report significant burnout, particularly related to electronic health record burden and decreased autonomy in clinical decision-making.
  • Critical Care and Intensive Care physicians work in emotionally demanding environments with high patient acuity and frequent end-of-life conversations. The moral distress associated with intensive care medicine contributes substantially to burnout in this specialty.
  • Physicians in surgical specialties were more likely to report work-life conflict than those in nonsurgical specialties. 

Sources: AMA, Mayo Clinic, NIH


Physician Burnout by Demographics

  • Women in medicine experience roughly 27% to 60% higher odds of burnout than male physicians, even after adjusting for age, work hours, and speciality. 
  • Large-scale studies indicate that non-Hispanic White physicians often report higher rates of occupational burnout compared to non-Hispanic Black, Asian, and Hispanic/Latinx peers.
  • Resident physicians face intense rates of elevated stress and burnout (often exceeding 70–80% in specialized local or national assessments).
  • Single residents or physicians lacking long-term partnerships report notably higher loneliness and lower work-life integration compared to those who are married or in stable domestic partnerships.
  • Younger physicians, defined as those doctors less than 55 years of age, are 200 percent more likely to experience symptoms of burnout compared with their older peers.
  • The physician parent of a child younger than 21 years old faces 54 percent increased odds of burnout.
  • A physician with a spouse or partner employed as a nonphysician health care provider has 23 percent increased odds of burnout.

Sources: Stanford Medicine, NIH, AMA


The Consequences and Costs of Physician Burnout

  • Physician burnout costs the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $4.6 billion each year, primarily driven by physician turnover and reduced clinical work hours.
  • Burnout results in medical errors, lower quality of care, higher costs, and overall worse outcomes; the impact of burnout on the physician workforce is substantial.
  • For physicians, burnout can lead to declining mental health and subsequent depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
  • Physicians experience a significantly higher burden of mental health challenges and elevated rates of suicide compared to the general population. Authoritative data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and studies cited by the American Medical Association (AMA) estimate that between 119 and 400 U.S. physicians die by suicide each year. Literature reviews indicate that the physician suicide mortality rate ranges between 28 and 40 per 100,000, contrasted against a lower baseline in the general public.
  • Burned-out doctors are more likely to leave practice, which reduces patients’ access to and continuity of care.
  • Replacing a single physician typically costs between $250,000 and $1.2 million, with the American Medical Association (AMA) estimating a standard range of $500,000 to over $1 million depending on the medical specialty, recruitment length, and lost revenue.
  • Two in five U.S. physicians (40.3%) consider it likely or definite that they will reduce their clinical work hours.
  • Burnout can also threaten patient safety and care quality when depersonalization leads to poor interactions with patients and when burned-out physicians suffer from impaired attention, memory, and executive function.
  • There is good evidence that physician burnout results in more expensive healthcare and less satisfied patients. 

Sources: American Hospital Association, American Journal of Medicine, Psychiatry Advisor, AHRQ, Harvard Health, Mayo Clinic, AMA, CDC, NVDRS


Nurse Practitioner, PA, and Broader Clinician Burnout

  • Roughly one in three certified PAs and up to 25%–70% of NPs report symptoms of burnout or depression depending on the setting and survey criteria.
  • Clinicians in solo or NP/PA-led independent practices report lower burnout due to greater schedule flexibility and control.
  • The clinician workforce has not only grown but changed composition. Nurse practitioners tripled between 2012 and 2025 while physicians grew far more slowly, yet the administrative support base did not expand to match, a shift documented in the Ataraxis Clinician Support Ratio.
  • 62% of registered nurses report feeling overwhelmed over the past two years.
  • 54% of registered nurses report experiencing burnout.
  • Hispanic, Latinx, or Spanish nurses report the highest rate of overwhelm at 67%, while Asian nurses report the highest burnout rate at 59%.
  • 24% of nurses said they are considering leaving the profession, rising to 30% among male nurses. 
  • 41% of physician assistants report experiencing at least one or more symptoms of burnout or being completely burned out. 

Sources: Pri-med, Infection Control Today, Ataraxis Clinician Support Ratio, Nurse.com, AAPA 


The Workforce and Staffing Context of Physician Burnout

Physician burnout does not happen in a vacuum. It is shaped by the larger workforce pressures reshaping American medicine: a growing and aging population, a physician workforce approaching retirement, a rapidly changing clinician mix, and an administrative support base that has not kept pace with any of it. Understanding these structural forces is essential to understanding why burnout has proven so persistent.


The physician shortage

The United States faces a projected shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, with the AAMC’s range spanning from 13,500 to 86,000 depending on future investment in medical training. This includes a projected shortfall of between 20,200 and 40,400 primary care physicians and between 10,100 and 19,900 surgical specialists.

A separate analysis from the Health Resources and Services Administration projects an even larger total physician shortage, reaching 187,130 physicians by 2037.

The shortage is driven largely by demographics. By 2036, the U.S. population aged 65 and older is projected to grow by 34.1%, and older adults require more frequent and complex care. At the same time, the physician workforce is aging: 20% of clinical physicians are 65 or older, and another 22% are between 55 and 64, meaning a large share of the workforce is nearing retirement. 


The changing clinician mix:

As the physician pipeline strains, the composition of the clinician workforce has shifted dramatically. Nurse practitioners have become the fastest-growing segment of clinicians, tripling in number between 2012 and 2025, while the physician workforce grew far more slowly. NPs now represent a significant and rising share of primary care delivery.

This shift matters for burnout because new clinicians, whether physicians or nurse practitioners, rely on the same administrative infrastructure to do their jobs: the same scheduling, insurance verification, prior authorization, records, and billing support. When the clinician workforce grows and changes but the support base does not expand to match, the administrative load concentrates on the clinicians themselves.


The administrative support gap:

Between 2012 and 2025, the total clinician workforce grew 53%, while the administrative support workforce grew only 37%. As a result, the number of support staff per clinician fell 10.6%, from 1.97 to 1.76. In other words, clinicians are being added to the system faster than the staff who support them.

As the clinician workforce grows and the administrative load per practice rises, the support staffing behind each clinician has not kept pace, a structural pressure that shows up in the burnout data throughout this page. The American Medical Association’s governing body has stated directly that when practices are short-staffed, physicians absorb the extra administrative workload, which cuts into time with patients and contributes to burnout.

Our own analysis, the Clinician Support Ratio, tracks this dynamic directly. It measures how administrative support staffing has kept pace with the growth and transformation of the clinician workforce, and it documents a support base that has not expanded to match the clinicians who depend on it. 

Sources: AAMC, HRSA, AMA, Ataraxis Clinician Support Ratio


Solutions and What Reduces Physician Burnout

Burnout is not inevitable, and the research on what reduces it is fairly consistent. While individual wellness measures get a lot of attention, the evidence points more strongly toward organizational and structural changes, particularly those that reduce administrative burden and improve staffing.

Evidence points to several specific organizational interventions that reduce burnout: reducing patient panel sizes and visit volume to ease time pressure, adequate care-team staffing so administrative work does not fall on clinicians, peer support programs and mental health resources, greater schedule flexibility and autonomy, and regular well-being surveys that let leadership identify and address problems early. 


What the research shows works:

Reducing administrative and clerical burden is one of the most direct levers. Because administrative tasks are among the most-cited drivers of burnout, interventions that cut clerical work, streamline documentation, and remove low-value administrative tasks are consistently associated with lower burnout. 

Team-based care and adequate support staffing reduce burnout. A study across 50 U.S. Magnet hospitals found that clinician burnout was significantly lower in organizations that minimized chaotic working conditions, gave clinicians more control over their workloads, and improved interprofessional teamwork. When clinicians are adequately supported, the administrative load does not fall disproportionately on them.

Workflow redesign and reducing time pressure help. Interventions that address the “Big 4” drivers, time pressure, lack of control over the work environment, chaotic pace, and organizational culture, have measurable effects on clinician well-being. 

Improving control over workload and documentation matters. Research on advanced practice providers found that burnout dropped when clinicians had more control over their workloads and were involved in shared governance, reinforcing that structural and staffing changes, not just individual coping, move the needle.


The staffing lever:

Much of the evidence converges on a single practical point: reducing administrative burden and ensuring adequate support staffing are among the most effective levers for lowering burnout. When the people who handle patient scheduling, intake, insurance verification, prior authorization, and medical billing are adequately staffed, clinicians spend less of their time on non-clinical work and more on patient care, which is what most of them went into medicine to do.

For many practices, that means adding administrative capacity, whether locally or through experienced virtual medical assistants. Practices that struggle to hire and retain administrative staff locally, a challenge compounded by the same labor pressures affecting the rest of healthcare, increasingly turn to HIPAA-trained remote administrative support to fill the gap. For more on healthcare administrative support, see our healthcare talent resources and specialized virtual assistants for mental healthcare. 

The common thread across the research is that burnout is driven substantially by structural and administrative factors, and it responds most reliably to structural and administrative solutions.

Sources: AMA, Mayo Clinic, JONA / PMC, peer-reviewed research


The Role of AI and Technology in Reducing Physician Burnout

Much of the recent optimism around reducing physician burnout centers on technology, particularly ambient AI scribes and AI-assisted documentation tools that listen to a patient visit and draft the clinical note automatically. A wave of 2025 studies suggests these tools can meaningfully reduce documentation time and burnout, though they address only one part of the administrative burden clinicians carry.

  • Clinicians who used an ambient AI scribe for 30 days across six U.S. health systems reported a significant drop in burnout, from 51.9% to 38.8%, along with reduced severe burnout (18.4% to 12.2%) and lower after-hours documentation. The odds of clinician burnout decreased by roughly 74% after 30 days of use.
  • At Mass General Brigham, ambient AI scribe use was associated with a 21.2% absolute reduction in burnout prevalence, from 52.6% to 30.7%. 
  • In a study of UChicago Medicine’s ambient documentation pilot, clinicians using the AI tool spent 8.5% less total time in the EHR than matched non-users, and more than 15% less time composing notes specifically. For a clinician seeing 20 patients a day, that can add up to multiple recovered hours per week. 
  • In a randomized trial at UCLA, physicians using an ambient AI scribe reduced their average time writing each note by an estimated 41 seconds, compared with 18 seconds in the control group. 
  • Across a survey of more than 250 physicians and advanced practice providers at six health systems piloting ambient AI tools, providers reported less burnout, lower cognitive burden, less after-hours documentation, and an improved ability to stay present with patients.
  • Ambient AI scribes may also be more scalable than human scribes, because they can be deployed at a lower per-clinician cost, which is part of why health systems are adopting them quickly.
  • Documentation, however, is only one slice of the administrative load. One analysis found that clinicians spend nearly 28 hours per week on administrative duties, of which clinical documentation is only a portion.

Ambient scribes target clinical documentation, one of the heaviest single contributors to burnout, but they do not address the wider administrative burden, which includes scheduling, patient communication, insurance verification, prior authorization, billing, and records management. Technology can reduce the documentation slice; the rest of the administrative load still has to be handled by people. That is why many practices pair documentation tools with adequate administrative support, addressing both the clinical and the operational sides of the burden that drives burnout.

Sources: JAMA Network Open, NEJM AI, UCLA Health, UChicago Medicine, Veradigm, The Harris Poll for Strategic Education

Frequently Asked Questions​

Roughly 45% of U.S. physicians report at least one symptom of burnout, and burnout affects about half of physicians in practice. Physicians are also 82.3% more likely to experience burnout than workers in other U.S. occupations. Rates vary widely by specialty, career stage, and gender (see the sections above).

Administrative burden is the most-cited cause. More than two in five burned-out primary care physicians in the U.S. name it as the primary reason for their burnout, ahead of total hours worked. Time spent on documentation, billing queries, prior authorizations, and other non-clinical tasks.

Emergency medicine has the highest burnout rate at 49.8%, followed by urological surgery (49.5%) and hematology/oncology (49.3%). The lowest rates are in infectious diseases (23.3%), ophthalmology (25.8%), and pathology (28.3%).

The share of physicians reporting at least one symptom of burnout peaked at 62.8% in 2021, up from 45.5% in 2011. Two in five physicians (40.3%) also say they are likely to reduce their clinical hours.

Burnout costs the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $4.6 billion each year, driven mainly by physician turnover and reduced clinical hours. Replacing a single physician typically costs $500,000 to over $1 million, depending on specialty, recruitment time, and lost revenue.

Yes. It is the most consistently cited driver of physician burnout. More than two in five burned-out primary care physicians in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Switzerland say administrative burden is the primary reason. Physicians also cite non-clinical tasks more often than total hours worked, and one estimate finds U.S. primary care physicians would need nearly 27 hours a day to complete all recommended care and administrative tasks.

Ataraxis’s Clinician Support Ratio found that between 2012 and 2025 the clinician workforce grew 53% while the administrative support workforce grew only 37%. Support staff per clinician fell 10.6%, from 1.97 to 1.76.

es. Estimates suggest 25% to 70% of nurse practitioners report burnout or depression symptoms, depending on setting and survey criteria, and 41% of physician assistants report at least one symptom of burnout. Burnout also reaches nursing more broadly: 54% of registered nurses report experiencing it.


How to cite this report

To use these statistics in your own research, articles, or presentations, please use the following citations:


APA

Ataraxis Management Inc. (2026). Physician Burnout Statistics. https://ataraxismgmt.com/physician-burnout-statistics/


MLA

Ataraxis Management Inc. Physician Burnout Statistics. 2026. https://ataraxismgmt.com/physician-burnout-statistics/


Harvard

Ataraxis Management Inc., 2026. Physician Burnout Statistics. https://ataraxismgmt.com/physician-burnout-statistics/