ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the factors inherent in the job of a junior doctor that predispose junior doctors to burnout. There have been attempts in the media to portray junior doctors as champagne-swilling reprobates, but for the most part there has been support and a new-found understanding of the pressures of working in the National Health Service. Junior doctors, in their role on the frontline, are bound to feel the effect of this as keenly as any. The knock-on effect of this is problems with staffing, and more pertinently, gaps in the junior doctor rota. Both anecdotal reports and formal studies into burnout suggest that the rate of burnout amongst junior doctors is worryingly high. Factors cited as contributing towards burnout were job dissatisfaction, increase in workload, and having to work longer hours. Compassion fatigue, and ultimately, the depersonalization typical of burnout, is all too common as a result.
