103 - 5 Hidden Reasons Physicians Burnout - And Practical Ways to Stop It Now

Are you constantly drained, stressed, or wondering how long you can keep practicing medicine like this? Burnout isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a crisis.

In this episode of the Input in Physicians Blueprint, Coach JPMD breaks down the 5 real reasons physicians burn out — not just what research says, but what doctors are actually experiencing in their day-to-day lives. From personal stories of divorce and debt to practical ways to reclaim your time, health, and sanity, this episode goes beyond surface-level advice and into the heart of what’s causing physician burnout today.

• Learn why relationship stress, financial pressure, and poor self-care are silently fueling burnout.
• Discover simple but powerful habits to take control of your mental and physical health.
• Get inspired with real-life stories and actionable tips you can use today to reduce stress and protect your career and well-being.

Listen now to uncover the real reasons burnout happens — and exactly what you can do to stop it before it takes over your life.

The Enneagram Test

https://enneagram-personality.com/en?f=b&zi=enneagram

DISC Personality Test

https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/

 Open-Source Psychometrics Project

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/O4TS/

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00)
By the end of this episode, you're going to discover five practical ways to stop physician burnout today. Welcome to the Independent Physicians Blueprint with your host, Coach JPMD. That's me. Where we help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. In this episode, you'll discover the factors that I think contribute to physician burnout, how to prevent physician burnout,

and the things that I do to break bad habits. So welcome to another episode of the Invent a Physician's Blueprint, where we help physicians decrease stress and generate wealth in this crazy world that we're living in. And after doing some research and just some thought on what I should bring to my audience in terms of value and how we can help our physicians decrease burnout, I came up with five reasons why physicians burn out in the medical profession and five reasons or five ways to stop it.

So that's what this episode is going to be about is why I think physicians burn out. Now it's not rooted in any research that I've come up with for this episode, but things that I've read and things that I've experienced, I think that this is a pretty accurate list, at least of the first five things or the top five things. Number one reason is relationship stress. Whether you're married or you're single, you're always working as a physician. That's of course, if you care.

And I find myself, you know, even when I'm not seeing patients in the office as a primary care doctor, I think about patients who may be going through some difficulties and what I could do to help them. had a patient today that had bilirubin of 18 and he's had a climbing bilirubin over the past year was previously on hospice and how it couldn't help not think about what we could be doing for this patient. And, long story short, he really doesn't want much done, but we still don't have an answer as to why his bilirubin is 18.

after seeing multiple specialists. So if you care, that may play into the relationships that you have in your life. So things that are happening in your practice can affect your relationship because your mind is always going to back to the practice, especially if you care. You have long hours, leads to decrease in connection with your partner and sometimes difficult to bounce things off of that partner. And so that definitely can lead to burnout because at least from my personal experience,

I felt I was burning out and I was on the verge of completely burning out after my divorce or while I was going through my divorce several years ago. And I just couldn't figure out what I could do and why it was happening to me. So that personal experience of going through a breakup made me think of how stressful the practice was on my relationship. things were not going too well because of that. That was kind of my burnout story.

couple years ago. Financial burnout is the second one. So we as physicians go through residency making not much money at all, especially for the work that we're doing in the hospitals, in residency. And we come out of residency and we get doctoritis where we feel like we have not been compensated for the things that we were doing. And so we come out wanting to buy that expensive car and live in that expensive house or live in the expensive neighborhood.

and we buy that big ticket item and we end up spending more than we make. so financial burnout can occur when we do those things and have poor habits, which is one of the other things that causes burnout. But financial burnout, think is when you don't have a plan and you just basically having to work for the bills that you have. And sometimes that work with a practice income may not be generating enough and that increases your stress and

increases your risk for burnout. I'll have some solutions for that at the end of this episode. stay tuned. Sickness, poor health. That's another reason why we burn out. And sometimes we have things that we don't do that we used to do, I should say, in terms of exercise and finding time for yourself. Your self care may be neglected. And so that could lead to burnout as well. Because if you're not physically well, if you're not mentally well or emotionally well, that can lead to sickness. That can lead to

increase stress and that can lead to burnout. So sleep is also important as well in that health burnout risk. I find that when I don't sleep eight hours at night, that increases my stress throughout the day and sometimes even makes me feel a little sick in the morning. So self-care is important to decreasing burnout. And we'll talk about things that you can do to help that as well. Number four reason why physicians burnout is that they don't take time.

for themselves, so they don't take time off to spend personally, to spend with their families. I remember figuring that out a couple of years ago and I was going through some financial counseling and ended up getting out of debt a couple of years ago and paying off my student loan. And one of the things that I did was I booked a trip with my best friend and we booked a trip down to Cayman Island in celebration of me paying off my student loans. And it was a good feeling. I was able to take some time off because I can tell you, if you die,

caring for your patients. If you die young, caring for your patients, your patients are just going to say, you know what, he was a really good doctor. She was a really good doctor. And then they'll find another doctor. So I suggest that you take time for yourself, take a break, block off time in your schedule. Patients will always be there. And if you take care of yourself and you decrease the chances of you burning out, it's going to be better for your patients because they're going to have you for a much longer time, right? And the fifth thing that I think causes patients or

causes physicians to burn out are poor habits. We can create poor habits around alcohol, drugs, sex, around procrastination, lying, not researching, being lazy or complacent and listening to others and not doing the research on your own. This came up really front and center around COVID where some physicians were just listening to what the FDA or the NIH or whoever the organization was.

in the treatment of COVID and the measures and may not agree with a lot of these things that I may be saying around here, around this, but you know, I did the research and physicians need to do the research to get out of the poor habits of letting other people tell them what to do and what to say. Cause we're highly trained individuals. We went to medical school, we research everything in medical school. So there's really no reason and no excuse to let other people tell us what to do as physicians.

because we are pretty intelligent individuals. So that's my five reasons why I think physicians burn out. That's their relationship stress, financial stress, sickness or poor health, not taking a break or taking some time off and poor habits. And so how do we prevent them from happening? How do you prevent poor relationships from occurring? But first of all, I think you need to know who you are, who you are, the good, the bad, the ugly.

I'm a big proponent of personality tests, disc profiles, temperament tests, enneagrams. So we as physicians need to know who we are so that we can powerfully deal with our relationships. So I'll link to some of those tests that I've taken in the past in the show notes. But then once you understand who you are, then you can then better relate with other people because then you can say, okay, that person is this type of person. Then maybe I'll deal with them in a different way or that patient.

is very loud and boisterous. That may be part of their temperament. So we need to be able to adjust our way of being to how we care for patients, how we care for our relationships. so that's number one. Understand who we are before we judge and before we say things to other people that may hurt them. So number two, financial stress. How do we make sure that we are not financially stressed? Well, I've said this time and time again in this podcast and I've had guests

who've echoed the same thing, but we need to get out of debt. Physicians need to get out of debt as soon as possible, create a budget, have a financial plan, spend less than what you make. And that's how you're going to decrease the chances of you having that financial stress that causes you to burn up. Poor health. As physicians, we should be in the best of health, right? We need to get our screening tests done, PSAs, colonoscopies, coronary calcium scores, which I did two years ago, or was it last year? It was zero.

So even though my cholesterol is a little bit on the high side, I'm not overweight, but I was able to get a coronary calcium score that kind of helps you risk stratify your probability of you developing any coronary artery disease. So yeah, and get a buddy to work out with. If you're not motivated, get a trainer, play a sport, try to play soccer at least once or twice a week, if not by myself, but with the kids. So that is something that you can do to help keep your health in tip top shape. And number four,

How do you take time off? Well, obviously you take vacation. You block time off your schedule. I kind of mentioned that before. And it's really important to take time off for yourself, to be with yourself sometimes. Hopefully you'll be with your family and people that you love. So take a vacation. That's important. least once, twice a year. I say two, three times a year, but that's if you can afford it, of course, and if you're out of debt. And the last thing is how do you break out of these poor habits?

Well, I say you seek counsel. I've said this time and time again, also in this podcast is if you don't know something, find out, get a counselor, get wise counsel. Affirmations is big. I do affirmations that can help me reprogram my brain to do what I want it to do in a good way. Don't just accept what the research and what people say out there. Do the research yourself. Take time. Don't be lazy. I pray, meditate.

also something that can help you break the bad habits and then play music, play songs, sing, do things that are going to again help you break out of those habits that you may be wanting to break out of. So those are the five things I think you can do to help decrease your burnout. I hope this was helpful. This was a longer episode than I thought, but I think it's important to kind of hear a different perspective.

Some of these things are researched. just didn't have, I didn't take the time to research each one of them, but it's kind of coming more intuitive to me because these are some of the things that I've done to help decrease my burnout, especially in the times of stress. So I hope this has helped and thank you for listening and we'll see you next week. So what you learned today that physician burnout is real. And if you implement strategies to get out of debt, take time off for yourself, understand yourself to personality tests,

exercise and break bad habits, then your chances of success are excellent. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you'd like to hear more, subscribe, follow your favorite podcast app so you'll never miss an episode.