Journal Club: Physical Therapy Burnout is Real

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If you’ve been following the blog recently, you know we had a discussion about the necessity of rest in our personal lives. Caleb did a fantastic job highlighting the need for rest to help us in our work days and with our families. If you missed it, you can get caught up by clicking here.

But another reason why I think resting is important for our careers is to avoid PT burnout. Burnout can happen in many fields and PT is no exception. There are many factors that can contribute to burnout (work environment, productivity standards, patient populations, etc) but today I wanted to highlight a study that have looked at the prevalence of burnout in our profession.

Burnout in Physical Therapists

As you can see, a fairly high number of physical therapists will experience burnout - anywhere between 77-83%. I think it’s important to be aware of the high prevalence to guard your work/life balance and incorporate some of the concepts of rest we discussed on the last blog. We have much needed skills in today’s healthcare environment and we all need to make sure we can operate in our field for the long haul. That will require rest and strategies to prevent burnout.
 
I hope today’s blog gives you some food for thought and that if you are feeling burnout, you begin to rest and assess your work/life balance.

​Jason

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