Mental wellness could be key to overcoming burnout for radiologists
Burnout is on the rise among radiologists, but it isn’t all bad news, according to a recent Academic Radiology review. By prioritizing mental wellness, promoting open communication and cultivating a healthy work environment, practice administrators can help mitigate the fatigue caused by excessive workloads and long hours.
Radiologists aren’t the only physicians experiencing burnout, lead author Alison L. Chetlen, DO, and colleagues wrote—and physicians aren’t the only occupation dealing with the problem. But radiologists in particular are seeing high rates of burnout, likely due to a combo of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a low sense of personal accomplishment.
“The incidence of burnout in healthcare professionals, including radiologists, is increasing at record levels,” Chetlen, a radiologist at Penn State Health’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and co-authors wrote. “Urgent measures are needed to address this global malady.”
It’s first important to understand why nearly half of radiologists reported symptoms of burnout in 2017, the authors said. Communication between physicians and their administrators could be part of the puzzle, since perceived lack of appreciation for or recognition of a radiologist’s work can lead to feelings of inadequacy or discontent. Many physicians don’t feel their hospitals are supporting their work to an appropriate extent, and waning transparency at the administrative level means a lot of radiologists assume they’ve lost professional autonomy and control over things like their daily schedule, on-call responsibilities and vacation time.
Workload has also increased, Chetlen et al. said, in tandem with the advent of PACS. Though it’s improved many corners of medical care, PACS also requires more work on the part of the attending physician, who might already be working overtime with greater expectations for their quality of work.
“Before PACS, regular face-to-face interactions between referring clinicians and clinical radiologists were common practice,” the authors wrote. “As a result of these interactions, the radiologists developed a greater understanding of the clinical problem at hand, which in turn led to more meaningful and impactful radiology reports.”
Without those interactions, research has proven radiologists have been more disconnected from both their colleagues and their patients.
To overcome burnout, which also affects more than half of some radiology trainees, Chetlen and her team suggested a combination of physician-directed and organization-directed interventions. Physicians teetering on the edge of burnout might try mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy or facilitated small-group sessions, they said. Radiologists themselves might want to prioritize restoring their physical, emotional and relationship balances while making sure they’re taking enough time off work for themselves.
Bigger organizations can help by ensuring transparency at all levels of hospital management, Chetlen and co-authors said. It’s also important to provide imagers with EMR and PACS support, as well as to routinely measure and address wellness as a community. Administrators should provide hospital staff with wellness and burnout resources to encourage job satisfaction and mental wellbeing.
“Burnout is pervasive among clinicians, and often goes underdiagnosed and underreported,” the team wrote. “Preventing burnout in radiologists is vital for ensuring high physician satisfaction, optimal healthcare delivery and positive patient outcomes.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.