Physician burnout is improving but some specialties lag, the AMA finds

Dive Brief:

• Physician burnout continues to decline across the U.S., a bright spot for an occupation plagued by heavy workloads, pervasive stress and high stakes. But the improvement is not equal across medical specialties, according to new data from the American Medical Association.
• The AMA surveyed thousands of physicians and found that 41.9% reported experiencing a burnout symptom in 2025, down from 43.2% in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023. The decline likely reflects employer efforts to reduce burnout, including by increasing job satisfaction, the medical association said.
• However, burnout rates vary significantly across specialties, and tend to be higher among doctors employed by hospitals, suggesting health systems could be doing more to ameliorate the phenomenon.

Dive Insight:

Physician burnout is a huge problem in U.S. healthcare. As doctors take on higher administrative burden and longer hours, the physical, spiritual and emotional toll is driving more to leave the field altogether, exacerbating America’s shortage of medical staff. Burnout is also tied to poorer quality of care and lower patient satisfaction.

Recent research suggests physician well-being has increased in recent years — a reason for optimism, especially after the coronavirus pandemic intensified longstanding stressors like workplace hostility. Burnout among U.S. doctors peaked at the end of 2021 and has improved since, according to a study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings last summer.

Still, rates of burnout remain higher for doctors compared to other occupations. And the risk of burning out differs depending on medical specialty, with research showing that doctors at the front line of care — in specialties like emergency medicine — are at the greatest risk.

The AMA’s latest study aligns with reports of improving burnout. But it also jibes with concerns that the sector still needs to be worried about doctors in particularly stressful fields.

The AMA found that emergency medicine practitioners had the highest rates of burnout, with 49.8% experiencing at least one burnout symptom. ER doctors were tailed closely by urological surgeons (49.5%), hematology and oncology practitioners (49.3%), and obstetricians and gynecologists (45.7%).

In comparison, specialties like infectious disease, nephrology, dermatology and psychiatry had notably lower rates of burnout, ranging from 23% to 32%.

The AMA’s data, which is based on nearly 19,000 responses from doctors across 38 states and 106 health systems, also dove into specific indicators of physician well-being, including job satisfaction and the feeling of being valued by one’s employer.

The group found that hospital-based specialties, like emergency medicine, performed worse than the overall average on a majority of those measures, including job satisfaction.

AMA President Dr. Bobby Mukkamala called on health system executives to accelerate efforts to address drivers of burnout.

“These data make clear that improving physician well-being isn’t one-size-fits-all — it requires targeted, specialty-specific strategies,” he said in a statement.

Doctors spend more than half of their workdays documenting patient visits into electronic health records, creating a burnout phenomenon called “click fatigue.” Some studies suggest that using AI scribes, which automatically record and structure patient visits into medical notes, may reduce physician burnout.

Many hospitals, wary of burnout’s impact on their labor force (and on their bottom line), are weaving AI into their operations, despite mixed data on the technology’s efficacy and pervasive concerns about hallucinations and other errors.

Hospitals have also tried to get doctors to be more active in decision-making, increased manager assistance for their workers and offered trainings to decrease harassment, among other strategies.

Facing high rates of provider burnout during COVID-19, the Biden administration told health systems that addressing burnout needs to be a priority, launched a national education campaign and devoted north of $100 million to promoting mental health and wellness among healthcare workers.

The second Trump administration has, to date, been less focused on addressing burnout or physician retention, and has even pushed some policies that experts say will worsen the nation’s shortage of doctors. Though, CMS officials say their deregulatory agenda is reducing administrative burden.