The DO Book Club, May 2026: ‘Stop Physician Burnout’ and ‘Moral Injury’

For Mental Health Month in May, I decided to break down two books: “Stop Physician Burnout: What to Do When Working Harder Isn’t Working” and “Moral Injury: Healing the Healers.” As physicians continue to experience high rates of burnout and depression, I wanted to share some of the strategies, lessons and ideas these books offer to help alleviate burnout at both the systemic and individual levels. These two books are helpful tools as you navigate being both a physician and a human being, and they will provide you with ways to start your healing process.

‘Stop Physician Burnout: What to Do When Working Harder Isn’t Working‘

When family physician Dike Drummond, MD, went through his own experience of burnout, he studied the problem, developed tools to address it and started a coaching practice to help his colleagues. After founding the website TheHappyMD in 2010 and amassing thousands of hours of real-world experience working with physicians, he wrote the book “Stop Physician Burnout: What to Do When Working Harder Isn’t Working,” published in 2014. The subtitle sums up his message.

The author starts with the basics. He shares psychologist Christina Maslach’s definition of burnout: It details the physical and emotional exhaustion, de-personalization and reduced sense of personal accomplishment that are hallmarks of burnout.

Dr. Drummond redefines burnout as a dilemma, not a problem. A problem is an unwelcome matter or situation needing to be dealt with and overcome, whereas a dilemma is a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more undesirable alternatives.

“The difference between burnout and normal stress is not the nature of the external events that you find stressful … burnout is about whether or not you can cope with the things that you find stressful,” he writes. “The difference between simple stress and burnout is your ability to respond to and recover from the energy drain caused by the things that stress you out.” (p. 19)

Multiple factors play into this issue, and Dr. Drummond’s solution relies on multiple tools to employ on both an individual and systemic level. The first step is for folks to define (for themselves) the ideal way that they would like their own practice of medicine to be. He urges physicians to refrain from magical thinking like “eliminate the electronic medical record.” Journaling is encouraged to reflect on experiences and find one’s true preferences. Many physicians find themselves stepping into the decisions and choices of others and have never reflected on the actions that they truly would prefer.

Burnout tools

Dr. Drummond introduces many tools, starting with what he playfully calls “taking out the head trash.” By head trash, he is referring to non-useful, often destructive ways of thinking that our culture and training have encouraged physicians to internalize. He then introduces several action steps that folks can employ to move, one step at a time, toward their own version of an ideal practice.

By no means is Dr. Drummond’s plan easy. He recommends employing a team to address the various issues. On a personal level, he offers TheHappyMD, online courses, private coaching and of course, his book. On his website, he says his mission is to coach physicians to lower stress, create a more ideal practice and achieve a more balanced life. His website also offers some free resources to explore. After reading his book, it is apparent how helpful a trained professional coach would be to have on your team to guide you through these dilemmas.

‘Moral Injury: Healing the Healers‘

Author Jennie Byrne, MD, is a psychiatrist in North Carolina who has worked in various clinical and leadership capacities within the healthcare system. Considering the alarming rates of depression and suicide in physicians and other healthcare workers, she concluded that the overused descriptor “burned-out” did not adequately describe the experience of beleaguered medical professionals. She finds that what they are actually feeling is more similar to “moral injury.” Physicians take the Hippocratic or Osteopathic oaths, yet while they strive to provide ethical and high-quality care, they are systemically restricted by the healthcare system’s infrastructure, from lack of resources to certain administrative policies and procedures, time constraints, financial barriers and most commonly, insurance companies. Thus, they begin to experience moral injury.

To expand understanding of the issue, she wrote and published “Moral Injury: Healing the Healers” in 2024. Dr. Byrne went right to the experts in the field and included their insights as well as her own conclusions as a workplace leader and clinician. She summarizes the historical path of healthcare delivery and how we have arrived at the current models. The author uses the stages of a pressure wound as a metaphor to explain the stages she understands within the continuum of moral injury.

Physicians work in systems where they perceive they have less and less autonomy to make important decisions. Dr. Byrne places great importance on open dialogue between administrators and clinicians.

“To address moral injury in healthcare workers, institutions must acknowledge flaws, engage in truthful recognition and work toward repair,” she writes. “Creating a culture of trust and empowering healthcare professionals to voice their concerns are crucial to prevent moral injury.” (p. 159)

Healing approaches on both the individual and institutional levels are presented, along with powerful examples of each.

“As clinicians,” she writes, “we are neither helpless nor hopeless. We have powerful ways to sync our personal values with the work that we do.” (p. 171)

Clinician leaders are challenged because they understand the pain of the clinicians and the goals of the system that they work in. Dr. Byrne sees this as a great opportunity for self-aware leaders.

“Overcoming the pitfalls of healthcare leadership often requires overcoming people-pleasing tendencies, intentionally showing up and communicating with your teams and aggressive self- and time-management.” (p. 188)

To research this book, Dr. Byrne conducted interviews with dozens of health professionals. She explores the prospects for healing moral injury through compassion, empathy and humanism. She describes peer support programs that are being used for surgeons who experienced adverse outcomes in their work. Some professionals were taking on advocacy work and integrating other creative activities such as gardening, literature and movie-watching into their programs.

Dr. Byrne asks the questions that we all need to explore:

• What if we reached out to our healers with small, daily healing gestures and words?
• How might our goodwill translate into the relationship our healers have with us as patients?
• How might individual positive words translate into benefiting the healthcare ecosystem all around us?

“Humanism can heal one human at a time,” she said. (p. 206)

The author advocates for the addition of AI and other technologies to allow “robots to do the robot work and humans to do the human work” of connecting with patients and peers. To rebuild empathy and to save our struggling colleagues, Dr. Byrne advises starting one human at a time. Her book is quite readable and optimistic. For physicians feeling overwhelmed by the problem of moral injury, this book is a useful place to start.

Related reading:

What is ‘gray rocking?’ Should we embrace it or not?

The DO Book Club, April 2026: ‘Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us’