There are situations when a doctor is overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients he has to deal with viz. following natural or man-made disasters, accidents or war. Fortunately, most of these occur at one time or over a short period. Though wars may last longer, their intensity and the consequent casualties usually wax and wane. Pandemics however are different; there is a spate of patients who are critically ill and this continues for months on end without let up. Doing duties under severe stress for prolonged periods is going to take its toll on the mental health of doctors, Manifesting with depletion of affective reserves, a sense of unreality along with a negative evaluation of one’s expertise as a specialist. This abnormal mental state was described as “Burnout” by Freudenberger and subsequently by Maslach [1,2]. In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors are finding themselves in combat with a new virus about which very little is known and the management of the disorder is being learnt on the job. Almost every day contradictory evaluations of various treatment regimens are published, which adds to the stress.

References

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Citation

Citation: Suprakash Chaudhury., et al. “Burnout among Doctors during the COVID-19 Pandemic". Acta Scientific Neurology 3.11 (2020): 108-109.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Suprakash Chaudhury., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.