The question is not whether physician well-being should be a priority. It is how we can measure and act before burnout becomes irreversible. And the answer lies in assessment—not just of medical knowledge or patient outcomes, but of the very conditions that shape a physician’s mental and emotional health.
Proactive evaluations of workload, job satisfaction and systemic pressure can illuminate the path toward meaningful change. By identifying stress points and crafting targeted interventions, health systems and organizations can shift from reactive to proactive care for those who dedicate their lives to caring for others. And at Baptist Health Medical Group, the prescription for a thriving physician workforce starts with measuring, understanding and addressing the challenges doctors face every day.
“Assessing physician burnout is important because it allows us to intervene and reduce any negative impacts on work and productivity, while also advancing quality of care and reducing physician turnover,” says Isaac J. Myers II, MD, a family physician and chief health integration officer and president of Baptist Health Medical Group.
This is important because “physician well-being is a priority for Baptist Health as part of our commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive environment,” adds Dr. Myers, noting that when physicians “feel understood and supported, they are much more likely to experience higher job satisfaction and lower levels of burnout, which aligns with our mission to provide high-quality care and a healthy work culture.”
To assess well-being, the primary tool Baptist Health uses is the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy®, “which incorporates five key performance indicators associated with well-being. And within this survey we also use some of the leadership questions and teamwork questions,” says Shawn C. Jones, MD, an otolaryngologist in Paducah, Kentucky, and medical director of provider wellness at Baptist Health Medical Group.
The well-being committee for Baptist Health also uses another survey, takes a deeper look “at leadership from an operational perspective as opposed to a physician perspective per se,” Dr. Jones says, noting that “we surveyed for the first time in 2020, which was kind of a crazy time to have your first survey. I really wish we’d have gotten one in the year before, but I became medical director of provider wellness in March of 2020, literally as the pandemic was getting going.”
While the surveys were completed in 2020, 2022 and 2024, Dr. Jones plans to assess well-being yearly moving forward to continue to identifying focus areas to drive physician burnout down across Baptist Health.
Identifying pain points
Through these assessments, says Dr. Jones, some themes emerged that were “pretty standard or run-of-the-mill in the sense that the issues that we have as a system are pretty representative of what the country faces.”
“Our emergency physicians, hospitalists and intensivists tend to have the highest levels of burnout. And that’s pretty standard across the country,” he notes. “We also have a significant level of distress among our family physicians. And it’s not that there isn’t distress elsewhere, our numbers pretty much reflect what we see nationally—we are at about 53% reported burnout this year.”
Beyond which physician specialties are impacted the most, other issues were identified through the surveys.
