For several years, the association Words from professionals works on the phenomenon of suffering at work in professions that are in contact with the public. This is how the association looked into the phenomenon of professional burnout at work (better known under the name of burn-out) within the medical community, and more specifically among general practitioners.
“There is no longer any doubt about the professional burnout of physicians. In a survey dating from 2003, the rate of 42% of doctors in emotional exhaustion was found. But these figures are not improving, ”insists the association which has just carried out a new survey with the BVA Institute, among 120 doctors. “Today, one in three general practitioners is burned out. The most affected are general practitioners aged 45 to 50, single, performing more than 6,000 procedures per year.
If the workload is the main stressor, the doctor-patient relationship and the perceived demands of the latter have become increasingly important. The relational dimension of the profession takes precedence over constraints of all kinds “insists the Association Words of Professionals who encourage doctors to” dare to talk about it and to break the taboo on the words suffering, exhaustion and depression. However, since Hippocrates, who declared in the 4th century that the doctor should “be of good color and overweight because the crowd imagines that those whose body is not so in good condition could not properly treat others … “, Nothing has really changed. Even today the image of the doctor is incompatible with that of a sick person. And if the patient groans at the time spent in waiting room, he pretends not to see that in this same waiting room, no less than 40 to 50 people take their seats every day, leaving the doctor on the verge of exhaustion.
