Physician burnout has been described as a “syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a sense of low personal accomplishment that leads to decreased effectiveness at work.’’

We need to take a good look at this phenomenon and not just create a cottage industry around it with seminars, how-to books, and catchy gimmicks aimed at patronizing the very physicians at risk. The downstream effects are real and detrimental to a society poised to take on health care quality as its rallying cry.

Recent articles have highlighted physician suicides and depression . Surveys undertaken to clarify causes of burnout identify frustration at the loss of control of one’s work environment, electronic medical records, layer upon layer of regulatory demands by nonclinicians that affect one’s ability to focus on patient care, lack of administrative support, and competing demands.

The number of nonclinical administrators has increased dramatically, while physicians are made to produce — to meet financial metrics and see patients — much like assembly-line workers. If they don’t see enough patients, there are punitive measures in place. If they do meet their quotas, physicians increasingly get poor satisfaction ratings from the very patients who are demanding time and quality care.

Physicians are now mere medical service “providers.’’ Let’s take some of the intense focus away from the physicians and redirect it on the environment in which we must work. Let’s get medicine back into the hands of the very people who know what it means to be a doctor.

Dr. Tanaz R. Ferzandi

Brookline