Physician burnout is being increasingly recognized worldwide as a serious threat to medical practice across all specialties with increasing prevalence. Burnout is a spectrum of clinical syndrome that was first categorized into 3 dimensions by Maslach as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. It has been reported that the incidence of physician burnout is rising in Western countries, but studies on the well-being and burnout in physicians in Asia are relatively limited. We performed a territory-wide cross-sectional study using internationally-validated standardized questionnaires on all residents and young fellows (within 10 years of fellowship) in Hong Kong between January and May 2019 to determine the prevalence and risk factors for burnout, their job satisfaction levels, and their health-related quality of life. 746 doctors responded to the survey, of which 514 (53.9% female; 46.1% male) completed the survey. The average number of hours worked per week were 53.5±14.8 hours. 28% of respondents were somewhat or very dissatisfied with their current job positions, and 2.7% planned to stop practising medicine in the next 12 months. The mean Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) scores were 59.6, 57.3 and 49.0 for personal-, work-related and client-related burnout, respectively. The top 3 cited sources of stress were from clinical duty (17.6%), patient load (16.9%), and professional examinations (12.6%). 4.1% of respondents expressed suicidal ideation or attempts within the past 2 weeks of completing the survey. 1.5% of respondents consumed alcoholic beverages 4-7 times per week, and 0.8% were current smokers, while 55.8% and 40.7% of respondents had not performed any vigorous or moderate exercise in the past 7 days. The finding of this preliminary study showed that a substantial level of stress and physician burnout existed in Hong Kong, and future studies to see how these can be addressed are warranted.
