According to data released more than two years ago, the American Medical Association is warning that about 1 in 5 U.S. physicians are leaving, or scaling back patient care. Those findings were based on surveys of more than 20,000 respondents at 124 institutions across the country. Things like burnout, general workload, fear of infection, anxiety or depression were commonly associated with intent to reduce work hours or leave entirely’ and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a role.
Our guest today is one of those 1 in 5 doctors the AMA warned would quit practicing. She is now doing a series of one-on-one interviews with doctors like herself who have recently left practice to try and get a better, more granular, handle on what’s behind this trend. She says broad surveys don't do the best job at getting to the heart of the matter, and the overarching term ‘burnout’ contains many facets that need to be better understood.
Dr. Maryann Wilbur is now a non-practicing surgeon. She’s a GYN Oncologist — that means she’s a surgeon who focuses on cancers of the female reproductive tract. Dr. Wilbur went to medical school at Boston University School of Medicine and then spent eight years at Johns Hopkins Hospital doing a four-year residency, and then a four year fellowship. She also spent one year doing a fellowship at the New England Journal of Medicine along the way. She was a practicing surgeon for four years before doing her last operation in September of 2022, most recently at University of Rochester School of Medicine, where she still does some teaching and research as a part-time faculty member.
Dr. Wilbur has since moved to Southwest Florida and is now Director & CEO of a new startup called Health Equity Consulting; and she’s co-author of a book called “The Doctor is No Longer In: Conversations with U.S. physicians,” along with Dr. Katherine Rieth, which will compile data collected from the interviews they’ve been doing with physicians who have recently left practice. It's due out later this year, and a more formalized version of it will likely be published in a medical journal like JAMA.
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