Wellness and Career Sustainability in Neurology

This article reviews drivers of well-being in neurology, using the practice of neuromuscular neurology as an example and high-yield interventions to enhance professional fulfillment. Neurologist burnout, once viewed as a consequence of insufficient personal resilience and poor stress coping strategies, is now recognized as an occupational syndrome resulting from a mismatch between demands and resources. Expert consensus now recognizes that even highly resilient physicians can experience low professional well-being when faced with long-term exposure to human suffering and death, which are common in both neuromuscular practice and neurology in general. Despite rising awareness of this issue in health care workers and the general public, research demonstrates persistently high rates of burnout and related indicators of low well-being among neurologists. Professional fulfillment is the opposite of burnout on the spectrum of neurologist well-being. Although wide-reaching systemic change is necessary to address high-level extrinsic drivers, every neurologist can learn to recognize when they or a colleague is struggling with the demands of practice and respond with evidence-based interventions.