Burnout is common amongst doctors in South Africa, with rates varying from 59-100% depending on the setting. It is caused by both personal and job-related factors. Symptoms include emotional exhaustion, cynicism, reduced personal efficacy, and vital exhaustion. Both individual-focused solutions like increasing self-awareness and improving work-life balance, as well as organizational solutions like fostering a culture of psychological safety, community, and meaningful work can help address burnout. Resources are available to help doctors suffering from burnout.

1. Burnout in doctors:
Is it me or is it ‘them’?
Prof Stoffel Grobler
Gqeberha

2. Addressing burnout
Houtrow AJ. J Pediatr. 2020;224:18-19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7194062/

3. Amy Houtrow
The implication is that healthcare providers who experience
burnout are not mindful enough or not resilient enough.
It may seem insulting to many healthcare providers to be told
that their distress is their weakness and that their symptoms
can be adequately addressed with meditation or mindfulness.
“Healthcare providers are in a double bind that no amount of
‘baby goat yoga’ will fix”.

4. Burnout
• Occupational phenomenon
rather than illness
• Occurs in the context of work.
Anti-Burnout:
How to create a psychologically safe and high-
performance organization
Michael Drayton (2021)

5. Burnout amongst
doctors in South Africa
Before covid rates of burnout in South
African studies varied between 59% to
100% - depending on the setting.
A matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’?

6. Burnout cycle
Your job
Causative
factors
Symptoms
Treatment
and
prevention
You

7. “You + Your Job = ….?”
• Why did you choose THIS job?
• To serve?
• To save?
• To lead?
• To help?

8. The Medical
Profession
• Context of burnout is work
(occupational phenomenon)
• Work type
• E.g. the helping profession
• Work culture
• E.g bullying and lack of support.

9. Factors: Work
OVERLOAD CONTROL RECOGNITION COMMUNITY FAIRNESS VALUES

10. Factors: Personality
Type A Obsessive-compulsive
personality traits
Overly conscientious.

11. Factors: Value clash
Value clash between what is said (vison/mission) vs what is done (toxic work culture)
Creating cognitive dissonance
Moral conflict and distress
Moral injury.

12. Symptoms
Defined as a “prolonged response to chronic job stress”,
it is “a point at which
important, meaningful and challenging work becomes
unpleasant, unfulfilling, and meaningless”.
Christina Maslach

13. Symptoms
ENERGY TURNS TO
EXHAUSTION
ENGAGEMENT TURNS
INTO CYNICISM AND
DISENGAGEMENT
EFFICACY TURNS INTO
INEFFECTIVENESS AND
SELF-DOUBT
WHO: “A STATE OF
VITAL EXHAUSTION”.

14. Solutions:
Personal
• Increase energy
• Physical
• Emotional
• Spiritual

15. What can YOU
do?
• How do you “feel” about it?
• Means – are you self-aware?
• How do you feel about your
work?
• Now that you “feel” – what
would you like to do about
your “feelings”?

16. What can you DO?
• Workplace culture
• How do you perceive your work environment
and work culture?
• How do you want to want to be treated?
• Humanely? With dignity and respect? And
kindness?
• What are the values you would like to see
being lived at work?
• If you are a leader:
• How do you want to be remembered as a
leader?

17. What CAN you do?
• Lifestyle and work-life
balance: is what you are doing
sustainable?
• Sleep?
• Rest?
• Relationships?
• Exercise?
• Substances?
• Nature?

18. Solutions: Work
environment
• Psychological safety
• Have look at Schwartz rounds:
https://www.theschwartzcenter.org/programs/schwartz-rounds/

19. Solutions:
Community and
meaning
• Transformational
leadership is needed to
create a sense of
community at work and
return meaning to work.
• Realizing the importance
of relationships and
mutual respect.

20. There is help
• Resources
• SADAG
• Healthcare Workers Care Network
• 24 hour Helpline
• 0800 21 21 21
• SMS 43001
• www.healthcareworkerscarenetwork.org.za

21. Thank you for your
attention
dr.stof@mweb.co.za

22. References
• Are you suffering from occupational-specific dysphoria? Grobler C. SAMA Insider. May 2019.
http://www.samainsider.org.za/index.php/SAMAInsider/article/view/91/65#page=9”
• Burnout and psychiatry: WHO said what? Grobler C, Morar T. South African Psychiatry. August 2019 (20), p.36-
43. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62821139/south-african-psychiatry-august-2019/36
• Prioritizing the Mental Health and Well-Being of Healthcare Workers: An Urgent Global Public Health Priority.
Søvold LE, Naslund JA, Kousoulis AA, Saxena S, Qoronfleh MW, Grobler C and Münter L (2021) Front. Public
Health 9:679397.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.679397/full?&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_
medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Fro
ntiers_in_Public_Health&id=679397
• COVID-19: Mental health and clinical equipoise in the face of moral injury. Grobler C. S Afr J Bioethics and Law.
July 2020, Vol. 13, No. 1. http://www.sajbl.org.za/index.php/sajbl/article/view/637
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War Memorial Children's Hospital: A case study. 2011;101(2):115-8.
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Natal Province, South Africa: Evidence from a multi- site study of resource-constrained government hospitals in
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