Burned Out, Depressed Surgeons More Likely To Commmit More Medical Errors

Surgeons who are burned out or depressed are more likely to say they had recently committed a major error on the job, according to the largest study to date on physician burnout. The new findings suggest that the mental well-being of the surgeon is associated with a higher rate of self-reported medical errors, something that may undermine patient safety more than the fatigue that is often blamed for many of the medical mistakes.

Although surgeons do not appear more likely to make mistakes than physicians in other disciplines, surgical errors may have more severe consequences for patients due to the interventional nature of the work. Some estimate that as many as 10 percent of hospitalized patients are impacted by medical errors.

“People have talked about fatigue and long working hours, but our results indicate that the dominant contributors to self-reported medical errors are burnout and depression,” said Charles M. Balch, M.D., a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the study’s leaders. “All of us need to take this into account to a greater degree than in the past. Frankly, burnout and depression hadn’t been on everybody’s radar screen.”

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