Abstract
[This is an excerpt.] Crises in public health and social unrest have heightened the need to support trainee well-being. External factors coupled with oncology-specific factors, such as regularly facing mortality, balancing palliation with toxicity, the rapid pace of treatment advances, and engaging in emotionally charged conversations with patients, can lead to burnout. Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment; it affects physicians and physicians-in-training at greater rates than the general population. Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and burnout affected 28%, 17%, and 33% of radiation oncology residents, respectively, in the United States in 2016. Consequences may include inadequate patient care, professional ineffectiveness, and physician harm, including substance abuse, clinical depression, and suicidality. [To read more, click View Resource.]
