Burnout has become one of the biggest threats to the future of independent medicine. Tebra research reveals physicians across private practices are reporting rising mental, physical, and emotional strain that affects their confidence, their energy, and the way they move through each day.

Findings in this article are based on Tebra’s 2025 Physician Burnout Survey, a cross-sectional survey fielded between October 7 and October 24, 2025. The survey included 219 United States-based healthcare providers practicing in independent practices with fewer than 100 employees.

Respondents represented six clinical specialties: cardiology, emergency medicine, family medicine, primary care, pediatrics, and mental health (including therapy, psychiatry, and psychology).

Burnout symptoms and contributing factors were self-reported by respondents based on their experiences. Results reflect physician-reported conditions in small, independent practice settings and may not be generalizable to large health systems or hospital-employed clinicians.

This article explores what the survey shows about burnout in private practices and includes the words of physicians who described how it affects their work. It offers a clearer look at the pressures behind this exhaustion and the changes that can help make daily work feel more manageable.

Physician burnout is a work-related syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, mental and physical fatigue, reduced sense of personal achievement, and depersonalization, caused primarily by sustained administrative burden, documentation demands, and system-level pressures.

Rather than being driven by clinical care itself, burnout is primarily caused by systemic pressures. These are the top reported burnout drivers, based on the percentage of people who selected each as their #1 driver:

If you're a physician, you may recognize how easily these responsibilities expand. Tasks that were once small often turn into hours of work that sit outside patient care, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the parts of the job they value most.

Today, burnout is common across independent medicine: Tebra's data reveals more than one in three physicians report current burnout symptoms.

How long respondents have felt burned out: 

Kristin Trick, a mental health practitioner and private practice owner, explains that burnout often goes unnoticed because many physicians are conditioned to prioritize others’ needs over their own. For many, acknowledging burnout feels especially risky when their income supports an entire household.

"If we're the breadwinner for our household, we can deny burnout symptoms — because to accept them means we may soon be out of work with no paycheck to bring home," Trick shares.

Burnout shows up in different ways for physicians, but one pattern is clear across private practices: it lasts far longer than many expect. The survey reveals that for 44% of physicians, burnout can last one to two years or more — a duration that reshapes how they approach their work and time. 

Dr. Soma Mandal, medical director of Women’s Health at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, notes how what's often missing in burnout conversations is duration. "This isn’t a bad month or a tough season — many physicians have been operating in this state for years," she says. "At that point, burnout becomes the background noise of the workday, and that’s when it’s most dangerous.”

Physician burnout symptoms are persistent physical, mental, and emotional effects that interfere with daily work, decision-making, and recovery time.

Instead of describing burnout as frustration or stress, many physicians point to a deeper kind of fatigue that reaches their thinking, emotional capacity, and physical energy. When asked what symptoms they experienced in the past year, the responses centered on forms of fatigue rather than detachment or cynicism.

The most common symptoms include:

The symptoms clinicians describe — mental fog, emotional strain, and physical fatigue — show up in small moments throughout the day. Tasks that once felt simple require more concentration. The rhythm of the work feels less steady. Even brief pauses between patients can feel heavier than they used to.

Physician burnout is primarily caused by system-level pressures — not lack of resilience — including documentation overload, difficult patient interactions, bureaucratic tasks, and EHR friction. Documentation and charting consistently ranked among the top three burnout drivers across the board:

Percentage of providers who chose the following as their #1 driver:

The data also reveals clear demographic differences. Burnout does not land evenly across all physicians. Some groups feel the strain more sharply, particularly when it comes to emotional and mental fatigue. 

Women in the survey reported higher physician burnout rates of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion, and were more likely to note a loss of motivation or interest in their work. Men were more likely to report no symptoms at all. 

Why does this matter?

These differences highlight a pattern that echoes in many different settings: emotional exhaustion is the central thread connecting most burnout experiences. When combined with documentation demands and patient-related pressures, the load can compound quickly.

"Generally speaking, women have a natural inclination and ability for nurturing," Trick shares. "We care with our whole being, which gives us a lower threshold for burnout."

Mandal shares a similar sentiment about the added level of burnout for women. "Women physicians often carry an added layer of invisible labor — emotional availability, caregiving expectations, and the pressure to ‘hold it together’ for everyone else," Mandal says. "That cumulative load shows up as deeper mental and emotional exhaustion, not because women are less resilient, but because they’re often giving more of themselves across every part of the day.”

Understanding who feels burnout most intensely helps clarify where the pressure builds first, and why addressing the underlying causes matters just as much as recognizing the symptoms.

Burnout may be widespread, but it doesn’t look the same in every corner of medicine. As we already touched on, many of the pressures behind burnout are shared — documentation, patient demands, staffing gaps, and administrative requirements — but how those pressures combine varies from one specialty to another. Each field carries its own mix of emotional, clinical, and operational strain, and the survey results make those differences clear.

Physician burnout varies significantly by specialty. Primary medicine and therapy show the highest mental fatigue, while emergency medicine and psychiatry find difficult patients a top driver of burden.

* highest across all specialties

Primary care and family medicine practitioners report some of the highest levels of mental and emotional fatigue. Their days are shaped by full schedules, complex cases, and substantial documentation needs. Much of their work involves managing ongoing conditions, coordinating care, and making decisions without much time to pause or reset.

Top burnout drivers: 

Many in this group also shared that they feel less comfortable talking openly about burnout. When clinicians feel unable to name the strain they’re carrying, the work can start to feel isolating. Even familiar parts of the job — a backlog of notes, a growing patient panel, or a steady inbox — can feel heavier when they’re handled alone.

For many in this specialty, burnout shows up in the quiet moments between visits: the late-evening chart, the quick shift from one complex case to another, or the constant effort to stay emotionally present despite limited time. It becomes noticeable not because of any single event, but because the pace rarely lets up.

Solution: Relief in primary care often comes from redesigning the workday rather than pushing through it. Practices that protect time for documentation, streamline intake, and reduce inbox overload through automation report a steadier pace and fewer late-evening hours spent catching up. When routine tasks take less mental energy, clinicians are better able to stay present across long, complex days.

Burnout in emergency medicine has a distinct intensity. Clinicians in this field reported the highest levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in the survey. The pace of their environment — rapid decisions, unpredictable cases, and high-stakes interactions — leaves very little room to recover during or after a shift.

Top burnout symptoms:

Emergency clinicians often move from one urgent situation to the next without a natural pause. Patient encounters can be chaotic and emotionally charged, requiring constant vigilance. Over time, this level of sustained attention creates a kind of mental wear that many clinicians described as difficult to shake, even after leaving the hospital.

Many respondents in this group also said they have felt burned out for one to two years or longer, suggesting a form of strain that becomes embedded over time. Staffing shortages and heavy caseloads often mean taking on responsibilities beyond what the system is built to support.

Solution: In emergency settings, burnout eases when work has clearer boundaries. Team-based documentation support and more predictable handoff workflows help reduce the cognitive load clinicians carry after a shift ends. Even small changes that allow physicians to mentally disconnect between shifts can make sustained intensity more manageable over time.

Mental health clinicians carry a uniquely heavy emotional and cognitive load. Therapists reported the highest levels of mental fatigue, physical fatigue, and loss of motivation in the survey. Every session requires sustained focus, active listening, and emotional presence. When schedules are full or caseloads are complex, maintaining that level of engagement becomes increasingly difficult.

Top burnout symptoms for therapists:

Therapists often hold place for trauma, grief, crisis, or chronic emotional challenges. The work demands a kind of steady, internal effort that may not be visible to others but accumulates with each appointment. For many, the strain comes from transitioning repeatedly into emotionally charged conversations without much time to decompress.

"It's heart-wrenching to listen as client after client shares their stories of trauma, abuse, or depression," Trick confides. "When I'm not balancing these times with healthy choices and activities outside of sessions, I'm prone to experiencing more negative emotions and thoughts."

Psychiatrists face similar pressures, intensified by patient acuity, medication management, and administrative work tied to documentation and payer requirements. Compensation concerns also play an important role. Yet despite these challenges, many psychiatrists expressed strong commitment to staying in their field.

Top burnout drivers for psychiatrists:

Solution: Mental health clinicians report less strain when their schedules allow for smoother transitions between sessions and fewer logistical interruptions. Telehealth, flexible scheduling, and documentation tools that reduce repetitive note-writing help preserve emotional energy and limit after-hours work. Many mental health clinicians in the survey reported reduced burnout when offering care through telehealth.

"Since implementing telehealth, I find myself thinking about clients less often outside of sessions and handling logistical conversations, such as billing or scheduling, more efficiently," Trick says.

Pediatric clinicians reported similar high levels of emotional, mental, and physical fatigue, shaped by both the needs of their young patients and the expectations of the families who accompany them. Much of their day involves not only treating children but also guiding parents through questions, concerns, and complex decisions.

Top burnout symptoms: 

A significant portion of pediatric work extends beyond the exam room: communicating with schools or agencies, completing forms, documenting developmental details, and supporting families through uncertainty. These responsibilities matter, but they add layers of emotional and administrative work that can stretch an already full day.

Survey responses also showed lower levels of professional fulfillment and a reduced sense of personal achievement in this group compared to other specialties. Some pediatric clinicians in the study pointed to compensation concerns within the speciality, while others described the emotional weight of caring for children whose health trajectories may be unpredictable or difficult.

Solution: Burnout in pediatrics often improves when communication and administrative work are shared more evenly across the care team. Centralized workflows for parent messaging, forms, and follow-ups reduce the sense of being constantly on call. When non-clinical tasks are handled efficiently, clinicians have more capacity for the relational aspects of pediatric care.

Cardiology’s burnout pattern differs from the others. Emotional fatigue is the least common in this specialty, but physical fatigue and system-related stress are pronounced. Clinicians reported that administrative and operational tasks — documentation requirements, payer interactions, and prior authorizations — play a central role in shaping the workday.

Top burnout symptoms:

These responsibilities often extend beyond scheduled hours. Securing approvals, completing follow-up documentation, and managing communication with insurance providers can take significant time, sometimes overshadowing the clinical aspects of the job. Many clinicians noted that these processes interrupt their workflow and lead to longer, more fragmented days.

Solution: For cardiology, relief comes from reducing operational friction around patient care. Integrated workflows that simplify documentation, billing, and payer interactions help shorten long, fragmented days. When administrative processes run more smoothly, physical fatigue eases and clinical work feels less interrupted.

Physician burnout reduces care quality, increases errors, strains team dynamics, and accelerates withdrawal from clinical work.

Burnout does not stay confined to the person feeling it. Once it sets in, it begins to influence clinical work, team dynamics, and the experience patients have in the practice. The survey responses show that even small shifts in energy or focus can ripple outward in ways that affect the broader environment of care.

Many clinicians notice that burnout changes how they think and how they move through routine tasks. Focus becomes harder to maintain, patience thins more quickly, and decisions require more effort than they once did. This can affect charting, follow-up, and the amount of attention available during appointments.

One primary care physician based in Ohio described it plainly: “While burnt out, I am more prone to providing lower-quality care in the form of less in-depth chart review, less chart audits, less in-depth notes, and less time and energy spent performing effective patient counseling.”

Burnout also affects the reliability of practice workflows. Delays become more common, charting takes longer, and the risk of errors increases. For some clinicians, burnout reaches a point where stepping away feels unavoidable.

One millennial mental health therapist noted: “I have had to cancel patients the day of our appointment due to me having a panic attack or feeling so burnt out that I believed I wouldn't be helpful to them. I also took a month off before taking a break.”

These accounts illustrate how burnout alters the quality and consistency of care, even among highly skilled practitioners. As Trick puts it, "I can share endless resources with my counseling clients, but if I'm experiencing burnout, the joy I have at being with them or hope I have for their improvement is going to be stunted."

The strain of burnout also affects how teams relate to one another. Twenty-one percent of clinicians reported that they do not feel comfortable bringing up burnout with colleagues. This reluctance can create distance within teams, since shared challenges are rarely acknowledged openly.

Survey responses also showed that women are more willing to discuss burnout than men. When comfort levels differ within the same team, misunderstandings can grow and collaboration can suffer. Lower morale and tension often emerge not because of interpersonal conflict but because each person is working with less capacity than the job requires.

“One of the quietest consequences of burnout is isolation," Mandal shares. "Many physicians don’t feel safe admitting they’re struggling, especially in primary care where the pace never slows. When burnout can’t be named out loud, teams lose the chance to support each other, and everyone ends up carrying more than they should.”

A reduced sense of personal achievement was especially high in emergency medicine, where the emotional fatigue is the most intense.

For some clinicians, this reduced fulfillment leads to doubts about staying in their specialty. For others, it creates a quiet resignation, a feeling that the work no longer aligns with the expectations they had when they entered medicine.

This shift in fulfillment highlights a key insight from the survey: burnout reflects the conditions surrounding clinical work rather than the motivation of the clinician. It arises from workflows, administrative requirements, and the structure of practice environments that make sustained engagement difficult.

Expert tip: Trick's advice for providers is to diversify services as a means to prevent burnout. "Most therapists who've been in the field for 10+ years are providing services besides counseling: supervision, consultation, teaching, coaching, etc.," she notes. "I've updated my own service list in order to stay mentally fresh and professionally engaged."

As burnout grows, many clinicians try to create small moments of recovery. They exercise when they can, rest more deliberately, or spend time with family and friends. The survey shows that these habits are common, and 94% of clinicians rely on at least one of them to get through demanding weeks.

For Trick, exercise is a priority that helps clear her thoughts and remind her of her identity outside of work. "If I can't squeeze in a morning run or strength workout, I take a walk before or after dinner," she says.

Even with these routines in place, burnout often remains. Forty-nine percent of clinicians said they turned to at least one of the less helpful patterns when the stress felt unmanageable, such as:

These choices are not signs of indifference or lack of effort, they reflect how difficult it can be to recover when the workday leaves little room to do so.

“Most physicians I know are already trying to cope — exercise, family time, better sleep — but those strategies only help at the margins," says Mandal. "They can’t undo a workday that consistently spills into nights and weekends."

The survey makes one point clear: clinicians are not burned out because they lack resilience. Many are already doing what they can, and the pressure persists. Personal coping helps clinicians get through the day, but it cannot change the conditions that create burnout in the first place.

The sources of strain come from outside the individual: workflow demands, staffing gaps, administrative tasks, and technology that requires more time than it saves. Without changes to those systems, even the strongest coping habits can only offer temporary relief.

This is why many clinicians look toward system-level support, including tools that reduce documentation time, clearer workflows, more predictable staffing, and technology that simplifies daily tasks.

Automation, improved EHR usability, reduced documentation burden, and better staffing support have the biggest impact on reducing physician burnout. These physician burnout solutions shift pressure away from the individual and place it on systems designed to support daily care.

"Outsourcing billing has been one of the best decisions I made since opening my practice," Trick shares. "Rather than calling multiple insurance companies and wasting hours trying to learn why a claim wasn't paid, I delegate the task to my billing team who is well-equipped for the job."

Many physicians said that stronger administrative support makes their days feel more sustainable. Tasks such as intake, scheduling, follow-ups, and documentation become easier when workflows are clear and responsibilities are shared. 

Tip: Utilize scribes or support staff to manage charting and routine communication. Consider adjusting schedules to protect time for documentation or care coordination.

Physicians repeatedly mentioned that better digital tools, especially those that reduce documentation time, make an immediate difference in how the day unfolds. When systems work together and eliminate duplicate steps, physicians gain back minutes and sometimes hours that once disappeared into administrative tasks.

Survey respondents described technology as one of the clearest opportunities for improvement.

Tip: Tools like Tebra’s AI Note Assist, automated intake workflows, integrated scheduling, and streamlined billing reduce the volume of manual work that previously extended into evenings or weekends. These solutions do not replace clinical judgment; they create space for it by handling the repetitive tasks that drain attention.

Mandal notes, “When documentation is faster and workflows are cleaner, physicians can be more present with patients instead of mentally racing through the next administrative task.”

Practitioners across multiple specialties noted that fewer interruptions and clearer processes reduce the sense of feeling constantly pulled in different directions. Administrative simplification, whether through improved EHR usability, automated tasks, or more predictable staff support, can remove pressure points that contribute directly to burnout.

Tip: Use tools that reduce complexity rather than add to it. Tebra’s integrated platform, for example, helps unify scheduling, charting, communication, and billing in one place, which reduces the fragmentation that often makes work feel chaotic.

Physicians describe the difference simply: when fewer tasks compete for attention, the work feels more like practicing medicine and less like managing a system.

The patterns are consistent across specialties. Burnout improves when the structure around the physician becomes easier to navigate, not when the individual tries to push through more strain. Tools that simplify documentation, clarify workflows, or reduce administrative load address burnout at its source. They remove friction from the workday, protect time for patient care, and create a foundation where physicians can do their best work.

These are the kinds of changes physicians say help them feel more present with patients, more connected to their teams, and more satisfied with the work they do each day. And they are the kinds of solutions practices can implement now, especially with platforms designed to reduce administrative pressure rather than add to it.

Burnout will not improve by asking physicians to carry more than they already do. The survey results make it clear that relief comes from changing the systems around the work, not from increasing personal effort.

"Physician burnout isn’t about motivation or resilience — it’s about systems that demand constant output without adequate support," Mandal notes. "When administrative work overshadows patient care, even deeply committed physicians begin to run on empty.”

This is where tools like Tebra make a difference. By bringing scheduling, intake, charting, billing, and communication into one connected platform, Tebra reduces the administrative load that contributes to burnout.

Features such as AI Note Assist, automated intake, and streamlined billing help physicians reclaim time that would otherwise be spent on paperwork or follow-up tasks. When those responsibilities shrink, the workday feels more manageable and more aligned with the care physicians want to provide.

Burnout is real, but it is not fixed in place. As Trick puts it, "We all have choices to make everyday; when we're aware of burnout warning signs, we must make changes at once."

With the right support, independent practices can create a workday that feels clearer, calmer, and more sustainable for the people at the center of it.