Tebra's 2025 Physician Burnout Survey asked 219 United States private practice providers across 6 specialties about their experience with burnout, and found that emergency physicians experience the highest burnout rates across all of them. Sixty-eight percent report emotional exhaustion and 55% experience depersonalization. 

That's not a bad month or a tough rotation. It's a chronic syndrome affecting roughly two-thirds of the specialty.

The causes run deeper than long hours. Documentation burden, staffing shortages, difficult patients, and the relentless cognitive load of never knowing what's coming through the door create a perfect storm that other specialties simply don't face.

This article breaks down:

Emergency medicine has the highest burnout rates of any medical specialty, with roughly 51% of EM physicians affected, and 65% feeling burnout for more than a year.

Burnout here isn't just feeling tired after a long shift; it's a chronic, work-related syndrome. Psychologist Christina Maslach defines it by 3 components:

When emergency physicians identify their primary burnout contributors, 3 factors consistently rise to the top:

What makes emergency medicine particularly challenging is how these factors compound. When you're short-staffed, each difficult patient encounter takes longer. When documentation piles up, there's less time to decompress between challenging cases.

The result is a cycle that accelerates burnout rather than allowing recovery.

Emergency medicine combines stressors that rarely appear together elsewhere. High-stakes decision-making happens constantly, patient volume is unpredictable, and there's no continuity of care to provide the satisfaction of seeing patients improve over time. You might stabilize a critically ill patient, then never learn whether they survived.

This "always on alert" cognitive state defines EM work. Unlike a surgeon who can mentally prepare for a scheduled procedure, emergency physicians face whatever comes through the door. That constant vigilance creates a unique form of mental fatigue that doesn't resolve with a good night's sleep.

The Tebra survey reflects this reality: 55% of emergency physicians report feeling somewhat, hardly, or not at all fulfilled in their current roles. And 19% have often or always considered switching specialties entirely.

Shift work fundamentally disrupts circadian rhythms, and emergency medicine's rotating schedules make this worse. A physician might work days one week and nights the next, with the body never fully adjusting to either pattern.

The impact extends beyond fatigue. Chronic circadian disruption is associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, and depression.

Traditional vacation time helps, but it doesn't compensate for months of accumulated sleep debt and hormonal dysregulation. As the American Medical Association notes, even when emergency physicians take time off, they're often recovering from schedule disruption rather than truly resting.

Documentation consistently ranks as the number one burnout contributor across all physician specialties, and emergency medicine is no exception. EHR systems often require excessive clicks during high-pressure situations, and many physicians find themselves charting for hours after their shifts end.

Here's what that looks like in practice: a 12-hour shift becomes 14 hours because of charting. The recovery window shrinks to almost nothing before the next shift begins. Sleep suffers. Personal time disappears. And the cycle repeats.

Understaffing creates dangerous patient-to-provider ratios that increase both error risk and emotional strain. When boarding patients fill hallways and throughput demands exceed capacity, every decision feels rushed.

The problem compounds when support staff are also understaffed. Nurses, techs, and scribes handle tasks that would otherwise fall to physicians. Without adequate support, physicians end up performing work that fragments their attention and extends shift length even further.

Emergency departments see patients at their worst: intoxicated, in pain, frightened, or experiencing psychiatric crises. Managing aggressive or uncooperative patients takes an emotional toll that accumulates over time.

Physical safety is a real concern as well. Eighty-five percent of emergency physicians in a 2022 ACEP survey said they believe the rate of violence experienced in emergency departments has increased over the past 5 years.

Patient complaints and negative interactions gradually erode the empathy that drew many physicians to medicine in the first place.

Burnout doesn't stay contained to the physician's personal experience. It spills over into patient care in measurable ways.

Research documents impacts on diagnostic accuracy, treatment decisions, and medical error rates. Reduced empathy is particularly concerning. When depersonalization sets in, patient communication suffers. Interactions become transactional rather than therapeutic, and patients notice the difference.

Tebra's survey found that 19% of emergency physicians report burnout has negatively impacted their patient care. That's nearly 1 in 5 acknowledging a direct connection between their well-being and clinical quality.

Burnout, depression, and PTSD overlap in symptoms but differ in important ways:

Emergency physicians are at elevated risk for all 3. The specialty's exposure to death, violence, and suffering creates conditions where PTSD can develop alongside or instead of burnout.

Warning signs that burnout has progressed to a mental health crisis include:

Only 13% of burned-out physicians seek professional help, often due to stigma, licensing concerns, or simply not recognizing the severity. Tebra's survey found that emergency physicians are more likely than other specialties to cope through doomscrolling (52%) and alcohol use (26%), neither of which addresses underlying issues.

Individual coping mechanisms can help, though they work best alongside systemic changes. The most commonly reported effective approaches include:

Setting boundaries around off-shift time matters as well. When work encroaches on every waking hour through documentation, messages, and mental rehearsal, recovery never happens.

Some physicians reduce clinical hours strategically, mixing ED shifts with telehealth, urgent care, or administrative roles to decrease night work and cognitive load over time.

Systemic changes have the largest impact. Staffing improvements, including adequate ratios, support staff, and coverage models, address the root cause of many burnout drivers.

Schedule optimization helps as well: limiting consecutive shifts, ensuring adequate recovery time, and creating predictable rotations rather than chaotic month-to-month changes.

Technology solutions offer another avenue. AI-assisted documentation, workflow automation, and EHR improvements that reduce administrative burden can reclaim hours each week. When physicians spend less time fighting with technology, they have more capacity for patient care and personal recovery.

Find out how Tebra's software helps you get hours back each week. Book a free, personalized demo today.