Causes and Cures: Systemic Anxiety and Burnout in O&P

Much has been written recently about the degree of anxiety in healthcare professions resulting in a high burnout rate that was exacerbated by waves of COVID-19. In 2022 alone, nearly 1.7 million healthcare workers quit and 47 percent plan to leave their current roles by 2025.^1,2 O&P has not been immune to these effects. Because O&P clinicians work directly with patients, and patients are often ambiguous about acceptance of their devices, O&P clinicians’ relative anxiety and burnout is somewhat higher than occupational and physical therapists’, just outside the zone of being at-risk of burnout.³

Stress can be defined as the psychophysiological reaction to a real or imagined threat. While threats can be physical, there are often more subtle mental threats such as failing a project, not meeting expectations, letting a patient down, or not meeting your own career goals—basically, anything that causes negative emotions, avoidance, or the need to protect oneself. Anxiety is the long-term exposure to the perception of threats or stress; chronic anxiety, or burnout, negatively affects one’s physical and psychological functioning. The reality is that anyone who functions within a social or organizational structure will have exposure to stress. However long-term exposure, especially when coupled with loss of some level of control contributes to a sense of burnout and learned helplessness.⁴