What Causes Burnout In Physical Therapy?
It’s important to note what signs to look for, either in yourself or the physical therapists in your practice, to detect burnout. These signs include emotional and physical exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of self-doubt or less personal achievement. There are a handful of factors that contribute to burnout for physical therapists. Mainly, these include the stress caused by tedious and time-consuming paperwork, seeing a high volume of patients, and long working hours. Often, these causes of burnout are interconnected, and resolving one issue can have a positive effect on the others.
Overwhelming Paperwork
Paperwork is often cited as a big source of burnout for physical therapists. Many PTs find the amount of paperwork required for treating patients overwhelming. It often requires physical therapists to work outside of their designated paid hours in order to complete all of it. Long hours can lead to burnout regardless; however, working long hours that you are not being properly compensated for is a guaranteed path to burnout. Paperwork can also be overwhelming, even if you don’t have to spend multiple hours a week outside of work to get it done. Paperwork is tedious by nature, and a high volume of it can be overwhelming to physical therapists.
High Volume Of Clients
Having a high volume of clients does not always guarantee burnout for physical therapists, especially when PTs have autonomy over their schedules and are able to create schedules that support their personal lives. However, when PTs have schedules determined for them by their practice or clinic that contain a high volume of clients, they are more likely to experience burnout. When seeing a high volume of patients, one scheduling error can compound into a very stressful situation. Additionally, a high volume of clients either results in longer hours or shortened time with patients. Both of these scenarios can contribute to burnout. As mentioned previously, paperwork is a large contributor to the burnout that physical therapists experience, and the more patients a PT has, the more paperwork they have to work on every week. Overall, having too many clients without a proper support system will likely lead a physical therapist to burnout.
Long Working Hours
A combination of long working hours and a high volume of clients can lead to long working hours. Long working hours are a guaranteed path to burnout. Not only do long working hours often come with a lack of pay as work is being performed outside of paid time, but it can also create resentment within physical therapists who are sacrificing an excess of their personal time to work unnecessary hours. Continued long working hours are an inevitable cause of burnout.
How Do You Prevent Physical Therapy Burnout?
Identify Your Stressors
The first step in preventing burnout is identifying the stressors that can cause long-term harm. Every job will experience stressful moments; the key to fighting burnout is determining which stressors you can handle, which you can’t, and which you shouldn’t have to deal with at all. The occasional stressful patient likely will not be what causes you to burnout; however, more permanent conditions such working after hours on unpaid time or taking on too large of a client load so that you don’t have down time during the day and have to take work home are long term stressors that will inevitably lead to burnout. Identifying these stressors and beginning to find ways to limit them before you reach the point of exhaustion is an important step in preventing burnout.
Set Boundaries
Setting boundaries can be difficult in all areas of life, especially work. However, it is an important step in preventing burnout. Whether you are creating these boundaries with your boss and coworkers or just with yourself, it is equally important. Creating boundaries can look like separating work life and home life by not bringing home paperwork, or setting a maximum number of clients you can take on to make sure you aren’t working extra hours, especially unpaid hours. This is an important part of preventing burnout. These conversations can be hard to have and depending on your work situation, you may not be able to establish such firm boundaries. But even in situations where you are unable to fully establish a desired boundary, this conversation can lead to finding a compromise that meets the needs of those in your practice as well as your own needs.
Ask For Help
Ultimately, one of the most important ways to prevent burnout is to ask for help before you reach the point of exhaustion. It can often be difficult to reach out to coworkers or your boss and admit that you need help but it is so important. The more you mask your symptoms of burnout the less likely those around you are to be aware that you’re struggling and reach out. So as hard as it may be, reach out to those around you and ask for help. They may also be experiencing the same struggles as you and now you have the ability to problem solve together.
How Do Physical Therapists Recover From Burnout?
Recovering from burnout and preventing it are going to look very similar. Recovering from burnout should focus on individualized self care including mental and physical rest. However, attempting to recover from burnout without addressing the root causes of burnout will only result in a temporary solution. It’s important to identify your stressors and set boundaries that will help alleviate the pressure of these stressors. Recovering from burnout can also involve setting boundaries and asking for help in your personal life as well as at work.
One of the most important things to take away from this is that when trying to reduce burnout in physical therapy we have to talk about it, not tolerate it. Discussing burnout within our professional communities and denormalizing it is an important step in the process of prevention and recovery. When you join the NAIOMT family to achieve a physical therapy certification like the CMOT Certification, you also gain access to a community of like-minded peers that can help you through your struggles.
