Time off is trending: As doctor vacations tick up, burnout drops

After years of skimping on vacation and spending an hour or more answering patient messages and checking charts when they did get away, exclusive survey data from the AMA reveals a promising trend: physicians are taking more time off and spending a greater portion of it picking up a beach read instead of a laptop. 

While barriers to taking a truly restful vacation remain, health care organizations are increasingly recognizing what research has long shown: time away from medicine is not a luxury; it’s a lifeline in the battle against physician burnout. 

As the leader in physician well-being, the AMA is reducing physician burnout by removing administrative burdens and providing real-world solutions to help doctors rediscover the Joy in Medicine™.

Nearly 18,000 responses from physicians across 43 states were received from more than 100 health systems and organizations who participated in the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy® last year. The AMA national physician comparison report—which is exclusive data to the AMA that is not published anywhere else—reflects 2024 trends on six key performance indicators—job satisfaction, job stress, burnout, intent to leave an organization, feeling valued by an organization and total hours spent per week on work-related activities (known as “time spend”). 

The purpose of the aggregated data is to provide a national summary of organizational well-being and to serve as a comparison for other health care organizations. The results represent data from all organizations that surveyed with the AMA in 2024. 

In 2024, the physician burnout rate dropped to 43.2%. The data from the AMA’s national physician comparison report shows that doctor burnout has fallen to the lowest it has been since the COVID-19 public health emergency. 

For 2024, physicians were asked how many vacation days they had taken in the last 12 months. Of those who responded, physicians reported taking this many days off:

• 20 or more: 28.9%, up from 23.4%.
• 16–20: 28.5%, up from 27.6%.
• 11–15: 21.3%, down from 24.5%.
• 6–10: 11.5%, down from 13.7%.
• 1–5: 5.2%, down from 5.7%.
• Zero: 4.5%, down from 5%. 

Meanwhile, about one-third of emergency physicians who responded to AMA surveys said they took five or fewer days of paid time off (PTO) in the previous 12 months. And while 59.6% of physicians from all specialties surveyed took less than three weeks of PTO, that figure was 76.2% for emergency physicians, says a research letter published last month in Academic Emergency Medicine.

Explore how the AMA Health System Program works with health care leaders to tailor solutions that maximize support for physicians and care teams.

Physicians have long faced barriers to taking time off they need. While progress is being made, many of these obstacles still persist. 

For 2023, the most-cited barriers to physicians taking vacations were:

• The volume of inbox work faced on return: 49.8%, down from 55.2%.
• Financial impact on professional compensation: 35.4%, down from 40.2%.
• Finding someone to cover clinical responsibilities: 33.1%, down from 40.4%.

The number of vacation days taken in the past year, inbox coverage while on vacation and time spent working on patient-related work while on vacation are associated with intentions to reduce clinical work effort or to leave one’s organization, according to a study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

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More than 65% of physicians reported spending at least some time attending to work demands while on vacation—with some spending 90 minutes or more per day. This is compared to more than 70% in 2023.

Physicians reported spending the following amounts of time tending to patient-related phone calls and inbox messages in the EHR and other work-related emails while on vacation each day:

• None: 32.7%, up from 27.9%.
• 1–30 minutes: 37.3%, up from 30.6%.
• 31–60 minutes: 18.6%, down from 20.8%.
• 61–90 minutes: 6.7%, down from 14.3%.
• More than 90 minutes: 4.7%, down from 6.3%.

Discover the cost of physician turnover attributable to doctors not having full inbox coverage while on vacation. Meanwhile, this calculator will help determine the cost of physician turnover due to doctors taking less than three weeks of vacation per year.

Many health systems are making changes to help ensure physicians can truly unwind and relax on their vacations, a step to turn the tide on burnout.   

These examples from health care organizations that are members of the AMA Health System Program show commitment to reducing time spent working on vacation so physicians can rest and recharge.

1. Ensure physicians come back to an empty inbox

   1. As part of its efforts to reduce the burden on physicians to manage their inboxes while they’re on PTO, Baptist Health Medical Group has created a pilot program to tackle EHR use on vacation. As part of the program, a team—which consists of a physician, nurse practitioner or nonphysician provider—helps to offload some of the messages received by physicians who are out of the office.
   2. To help physicians enjoy their vacations and time away from the office, Baptist Health also established a group—which includes project managers from different departments, an IT member, an operations manager and three physicians—that meets every two weeks to address issues related to inbox burden. 

2. Provide help while away, keep time off flexible

   1. At Confluence Health in Wenatchee, Washington, about half of their physicians take four weeks or more of vacation per year and the health system also boasts high job satisfaction rates. It’s not just about the vacation time itself, though.
   2. In a primary care department effort at Confluence Health that is looking to be scaled more broadly, messages are pooled when a physician is out of office or on vacation. Other physician partners in the department either rotate responsibility for or get assigned to the messages. Ideally, physicians return to an empty inbox, with no messages. 

3. Help physicians feel supported

   1. At Hattiesburg Clinic in Mississippi, as part of exploring the link between feeling valued and reducing burnout, leaders are looking for system-wide strategies to show physicians how vital they are to the group’s success.
   2. A key part of helping physicians feel supported is allowing them the ability to unwind and unplug with clinical coverage—particularly EHR inbox coverage—while they are out of the office without burdening their colleagues.

4. Change the culture to encourage PTO

   1. At Marshfield Clinic Health System, leaders are looking to change the culture to create positive changes in physician well-being. An organizational biopsy showed that Marshfield Clinic physicians are better at using four weeks of vacation time compared to national statistics, and administrative tasks for physicians are less onerous than those seen nationally, but burnout was high.
   2. As a result, Marshfield has looked to support individual physicians. The clinic formed a peer group called the Physician and Allied Professionals Health Committee to provide resources to physicians and advocate for system-level changes intended to promote physician well-being among them on the PTO front.

Learn more from an AMA STEPS Forward® toolkit about reducing barriers to taking time off. AMA STEPS Forward open-access toolkits and playbooks offer innovative strategies that allow physicians and their staff to thrive in the new health care environment. These resources can help you prevent burnout, create the organizational foundation for joy in medicine and improve practice efficiency. 

Download the 2024 AMA Joy in Medicine™ magazine (log into your AMA account to view) to see whether your organization is part of the prestigious group of 130 organizations across 35 states that are currently recognized for their dedication to physician well-being.