Stress and Burnout among Physicians: Prevalence and Risk Factors in a Singaporean Internal Medicine Programme.

Dear Editor, Stress is a feeling of strain and pressure while burnout is a multidimensional syndrome comprising emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation (establishment of distant and cynical relationships) and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment.1 Psychological stress and burnout harm physician health and work performance, and can lead to poorer patient care.2 Relatively little data are available from Asian academic medical centres. We thus investigated the prevalence and risk factors of stress and burnout among physicians in our institution’s internal medicine programme.