When burnout peaks, some physicians turn to coping mechanisms that often make things worse. Tebra recently surveyed 219 United States-based healthcare providers in private practice about their experiences with burnout. While 97% of respondents said they have at least one healthy coping strategy, 53% admit to at least one unhealthy behavior.

TL;DR: Most physicians use at least one healthy coping strategy, but when burnout peaks, over half also turn to unhealthy behaviors that numb stress without addressing its cause. The shift from coping to numbing is driven by systemic workload pressures — not lack of resilience.

Distinguishing between healthy coping and temporary numbing is important for career longevity. This article examines:

Physician burnout is a chronic, work-related syndrome rather than a personal failing. According to Tebra's research, it is characterized by these core symptoms:

Unlike acute stress, which typically resolves with rest, burnout is systemic. Tebra found that 36% of providers report that post-pandemic workplace culture has negatively affected their burnout.

Burnout stems from workplace conditions like excessive documentation burden, administrative overload, and lack of control over daily workflow — not personal weakness. Tebra's research revealed the top burnout drivers are: 

When charting bleeds into personal time, providers lose the ability to disconnect. Outdated EHR systems and death by a thousand clicks increase this burden, as do prior authorizations and quality reporting requirements that pull focus away from patient care.

Despite high stress levels, Tebra's survey found that 97% of healthcare providers use at least one healthy mechanism. The most common are:

For example, regular physical activity — even 20–30 minutes of walking — reduces stress hormones and improves mood. 

"Exercise is a priority for me," Kristin Trick, therapist and private practice owner, says. "It helps me clear my thoughts and remember who I am outside of work. If I can't squeeze in a morning run or strength workout, I take a walk before or after dinner."

Additionally, peer support provides validation that non-physician friends and family often cannot. Sharing the emotional weight of difficult cases with colleagues helps process the unique pressures of medicine.

Finally, prioritizing sleep means setting boundaries around after-hours charting and finding ways to make charting more efficient. When you're chronically sleep-deprived, every stressor feels more overwhelming.

When structural pressures become overwhelming, 53% of physicians turn to behaviors that provide temporary relief but create long-term problems. The most common include:

Emotional eating means using food to soothe emotions rather than satisfy physical hunger. After a difficult shift, you might eat a meal or snack not because you're hungry, but because eating provides sensory comfort. The risk is that this replaces healthy emotional processing, eventually dulling your ability to recognize your body’s actual nutritional needs.

Doomscrolling is the excessive consumption of news or social media that makes you feel depleted, anxious, or angry. It can sometimes be triggered by revenge bedtime procrastination, when you stay up late to reclaim personal time after a day of giving your time to others. While it can masquerade as a way to wind down, the blue light and high-stress content disrupt the rest your brain needs, replacing rest with content that increases anxiety and disrupts sleep.

Alcohol use becomes misuse when it shifts from an occasional choice to habitual necessity to "take the edge off." The risk is of drinking at a frequency, amount, or way that harms you or others, including impacting your relationships or work. 

The table below compares how temporary relief strategies stack up against long-term health risks.

The transition from coping to "numbing" happens when a behavior becomes compulsive or creates new problems. According to Tebra's survey, 12% of providers noted that burnout has already negatively impacted their patient care, often manifesting as decreased empathy or missing clinical details. Warning signs include:

“Most physicians I know are already trying to cope — exercise, family time, better sleep — but those strategies only help at the margins," Dr. Soma Mandal, Medical Director of Women’s Health at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, says. "They can’t undo a workday that consistently spills into nights and weekends. Coping keeps you going; it doesn’t fix what’s causing the exhaustion.”

TL;DR: Individual resilience isn't enough to stop burnout. Practices must implement systemic solutions — like AI documentation and automated administrative workflows — to eliminate the pajama time charting that drives physicians toward unhealthy coping habits.

While individuals can manage symptoms, systemic change is the fix for burnout. When Tebra surveyed practice owners about strategies used to manage burnout, the top responses were automated administrative functions (34%) and EMR/EHR upgrades (33%). Implementing the right technology can help to interrupt the cycle of burnout by giving you back time in your day.

Practice automation tools specifically address the manual, repetitive tasks that consume both staff and physician energy. For instance, automated appointment reminders can reduce no-shows by 29% while eliminating hours of phone calls.

Similarly, digital intake forms and two-way secure messaging allow patients to share information and ask questions without generating the constant interruptions and manual data entry that interrupt clinical workflow.

Separate from general automation, AI-assisted documentation is transforming the clinical experience by capturing patient encounters in real-time. Voice-to-text and ambient documentation technologies listen to patient conversations and generate draft notes automatically. Providers who use AI documentation tools report completing their notes 25% faster, which often translates to reclaiming 5–10 hours per week.

Finally, dashboards that track after-hours charting time, inbox volume, and workload distribution give leadership visibility into burnout indicators before they reach crisis level. When leadership can see that one provider consistently charts until 10pm while others finish by 6pm, they can investigate workflow issues and redistribute workload.

Burnout is a structural problem that requires structural solutions. Tebra's integrated platform is specifically designed to reduce the administrative weight that drives physicians toward unhealthy coping mechanisms. By addressing the root causes of fatigue, practices can foster an environment where healthy coping is sustainable and "numbing" is no longer the default.

See how Tebra works in a personalized demo focused on your practice's specific workflow challenges.