Physician burnout declines overall, but gaps persist across specialties, AMA data show

Physician burnout continued trending down last year, but some specialties have it worse than others, according to the latest data from the American Medical Association (AMA).

The share of physicians reporting at least one burnout symptom fell to 41.9% in 2025, down from 43.2% in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023. But the burdens of workplace burnout are not distributed evenly across medicine, according to the AMA Organizational Biopsy survey of almost 19,000 physicians across 38 states and 106 health systems.

The year 2025 marked another year of progress in reducing overall physician burnout levels, AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, said in a news release.

"This reflects broad gains in engagement, well-being, and perceived support across organizations," he said. “However, burnout varies widely by medical specialty, driven by differences in workload, administrative burden, clinical environment, staffing support, and the day-to-day realities of practice. Building effective, lasting solutions requires better understanding where physicians are struggling —_- and why.”

The report benchmarks five indicators of physician well-being: burnout, job stress, job satisfaction, intent to leave an organization and feeling valued by an organization.

Four of the five indicators improved significantly from 2024 to 2025. However, hospital-based specialties — including emergency medicine, radiology and anesthesiology — performed below the overall benchmark on three of the five measures, pointing to persistent operational and workflow challenges in those settings.

Among the specialties and reported burnout rates:

• Emergency medicine — 49.8%
• Urological surgery — 49.5%
• Hematology/oncology — 49.3%
• Obstetrics and gynecology — 45.7%
• Radiology — 45.2%
• Family medicine — 45%
• General surgery — 43.8%
• Cardiology — 43.5%
• Gastroenterology — 43.5%
• Anesthesiology — 39.2%
• Psychiatry — 31.6%
• Dermatology — 31.5%
• Nephrology — 29.3%
• Infectious diseases — 23.3%

Feeling valued

Physicians reporting that they feel valued by their organization — to a great or moderate extent — rose to 56.2%, a 1.7 percentage point increase from 2024. Gender differences remained notable: 59.6% of male physicians reported feeling valued, compared with 53.3% of female physicians. Physicians with one to five years in practice reported feeling valued at a rate of 57.9%, while those with more than 20 years in practice reported 59.4%.

Overall job satisfaction was relatively stable across specialty groups. Psychiatry reported the highest satisfaction at 83%, followed by obstetrics and gynecology at 81.2%. Hospital-based specialties posted the lowest satisfaction rate at 74.8%.

“These data make clear that improving physician well-being isn’t one-size-fits-all — it requires targeted, specialty-specific strategies,” Mukkamala said. “By reducing administrative burden and advancing evidence-based solutions, we can help physicians rediscover the joy in medicine while building more sustainable practice environments. The AMA urges health system leaders to use these insights to benchmark performance and accelerate efforts to address the unique drivers of burnout across specialties.”

Resources to help

AMA’s announcement included a reminder about its information and resources available to help physicians and health system leaders improve workplace conditions that contribute to burnout.

This week AMA announced a new continuing education program that aims to reduce physician burnout with professional training about feeling valued, resilience and mentoring. The association also highlighted Texas Children’s Pediatrics for its work with the AMA Organizational Biopsy survey to log and analyze physician assessments of workplace practices.