Half of the doctors and nurses who work in internal medicine departments are so stressed that they suffer from burnout syndrome: it means that they live their work in a state of permanent stress. This happens more frequently if you are donnadue to the difficulty of combining work time with that absorbed by children and the family in general.
To provide the photograph of doctors and nurses “on the verge of a nervous breakdown” is the survey conducted by Fadoi, the Federation of hospital internistsout of a representative sample of over two thousand healthcare professionals In total, 49.6% of the sample declare themselves in “burnout”, but the percentage rises to 52% when it comes to doctors, to fall back to 45% in the case of nurses. Depressed, stressed and in constant sleep deprivation due to increasingly heavy schedules and workloads, with the aggravating circumstance of the lack of recognition, the almost impossibility of establishing an empathetic relationship with patients and the bureaucracy that makes everything even more difficult. Half of those who are heavily stressed say they plan to quit by the end of the year.
The risk of mistakes
Stress also leads to running into some inevitable mistakes. A study conducted by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Mayo Clinic of Minnesota found at least one major error in the course of a year in 36% of burnout white coats. Percentage that projected on the total number of our doctors gives a total of over 20 thousand serious errors.
Furthermore, «the influence of burnout on occupational diseases is now a fact ascertained by the scientific literature», says the president of Fadoi, Francesco Dentali. “The risk of heart attack of myocardium and other coronary adverse events is in fact about two and a half times higher in those in burnout, while the threats of abortion they range from 20% when working hours do not exceed 40 hours per week, gradually rising to 35% when you get to 70. An event that is less and less rare with the chronic undersizing of hospital organic plants».