Incomplete Staffing Linked to Increased Burnout and Turnover Intentions Among US Physicians, New Study Finds

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine reveals that incomplete staffing in healthcare teams is significantly associated with higher rates of burnout and increased intentions to leave the profession among US physicians.

The cross-sectional survey study, “Incomplete Team Staffing, Burnout, and Work Intentions Among US Physicians,” was conducted by researchers at UCSF, the American Medical Association, and Stanford University. DoC-IT’s Lisa Rotenstein, MD, MBA, MSc, led the effort, along with Purva Shah, MS, Tait Shanafelt, MD, and Christine A. Sinsky, MD.

Together, they assessed the prevalence of incomplete team staffing in the post–COVID-19 pandemic healthcare landscape and its implications on physician wellbeing and workforce stability. Notably, 47.9% of physician respondents reported working with an incompletely staffed team more than a quarter of the time.

The findings underscore the critical impact of staffing adequacy on physician mental health and retention, highlighting the need for healthcare systems to address staffing challenges to mitigate burnout and prevent attrition in the medical workforce.

Podcast: 3 Studies From the Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting

Want to hear directly from Dr. Rotenstein? Tune into this special JAMA Internal Medicine podcast episode where she discusses her presentation at the 2025 Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting with JAMA Internal Medicine Associate Editor Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH. For more details about Dr. Rotenstein’s SGIM meeting presentations, visit our event page.

About Lisa Rotenstein, MD, MBA, MSc

Dr. Rotenstein, a primary care physician, researcher, and healthcare leader, specializes in ambulatory care delivery, physician well-being, gender issues in medicine, and the impact of electronic health records on medical practice around these topics. Her research has been widely published, such as her work on physician and trainee mental health – published in JAMA, JAMA Health Forum, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine – has fostered increased awareness of the epidemic of depression and burnout in medical students and physicians and catalyzed action to address this public health burden. Her research on the electronic health record (EHR), published in JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Network Open, and JAMIA, have deepened the field’s understanding of the role of the EHR in physician experience.

Among her many achievements, Dr. Rotenstein has been named a 2022 Modern Healthcare Top 25 Emerging Leader, the 2022 New England Region SGIM Investigator of the Year, and a 2024 member of the New Voices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.