Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

by Atul Gawande

This sort of burnout is surprisingly common. Doctors are supposed to be tougher, steadier, better able to handle pressure than most. (Don’t the rigors of medical training weed out the weak ones?) But the evidence suggests otherwise. Studies show, for example, that alcoholism is no less common among doctors than among other people. Doctors are more likely to become addicted to prescription narcotics and tranquilizers, presumably because we have such easy access to them. Some 32 percent of the general working-age population develops at least one serious mental disorder—such as major depression, mania, panic disorder, psychosis, or addiction—and there is no evidence that such disorders are any less common among doctors. And, of course, doctors become ill, old, and disaffected, or distracted by their own difficulties, and for these and similar reasons they falter in their care of patients. We’d all like to think of “problem doctors” as aberrations.