AMA: Physician burnout rates are falling, specialty gaps remain

CHICAGO - New data from the American Medical Association (AMA) show physician burnout continuing to decline nationwide, but significant differences across medical specialties underscore the need for more targeted solutions within health systems.

In 2025, 41.9% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout-down from 43.2% in 2024 and 48.2% in 2023-reflecting steady progress in physician well-being also found in peer-reviewed research. However, AMA-exclusive data reveal that the burden of burnout is not shared equally by physicians across medicine.

"2025 marked another year of progress in reducing overall physician burnout levels," said AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD. "This reflects broad gains in engagement, well-being, and perceived support across organizations. 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."

According to AMA data, the highest burnout rates were reported in 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%) and gastroenterology (43.5%). In contrast, infectious diseases (23.3%), nephrology (29.3%), dermatology (31.5%), psychiatry (31.6%), and anesthesiology (39.2%) reported the lowest levels.

The findings are based on nearly 19,000 physician responses across 38 states and 106 health systems participating in the AMA Organizational Biopsy^®and reported in the 2025 edition of the AMA national physician comparison report. The aggregated data available in the report provides a national snapshot of physician well-being by benchmarking five key indicators: burnout, job stress, job satisfaction, intent to leave an organization, and feeling valued by an organization.

While four of the five indicators improved significantly from 2024 to 2025, variation by specialty remains pronounced. Hospital-based specialties-including emergency medicine, radiology and anesthesiology-performed worse than the overall benchmark on three of five measures, suggesting persistent operational and workflow challenges.

Physicians reported feeling valued by their organization (great or moderate extent) at 56.2% representing an increase of 1.7% from 2024. There continues to be variation on physician feeling valued by gender (female respondents at 53.3% and male respondents at 59.6%), by years in practice (physicians 1-5 years in practice reporting at 57.9% and physicians post 20 years at 59.4%) and by specialty.

Overall job satisfaction was stable across specialty groupings with the highest satisfaction reported by psychiatry (83%) and obstetrics and gynecology (81.2%), while hospital-based specialties reported the lowest satisfaction (74.8%).

"These data make clear that improving physician well-being isn't one-size-fits-all-it requires targeted, specialty-specific strategies," said Dr. Mukkamala. "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."

The AMA can help health systems tailor solutions to the unique drivers of burnout across specialties and maximize support for care teams with cutting-edge tools, information and resources. Through its Well-being Toolkit, health systems can learn how organizations are partnering with the AMA, explore proven strategies to reduce burnout and enhance physician well-being, and calculate the cost of physician burnout to their organization.