Is AI a Cure for Clinician Burnout?

The practice of medicine is evolving rapidly, with clinicians facing enhanced pressure to maximize productivity while managing increasingly complex patients and related clinical documentation. Indeed, clinicians are spending less time seeing patients, and more time in front of a computer screen.

Despite the many rewards of clinical medicine, rates of clinical practice attrition have increased among physicians in all specialties since 2013 with enhanced administrative burdens identified as a prominent driver. Among its many applications, artificial intelligence (AI) has immense potential to reduce the administrative and cognitive burdens that contribute to clinician burnout and attrition through tools such as AI scribes – these technologies have been rapidly adopted across healthcare systems and are already in use by ~30% of physician practices. The hope is that AI scribes will significantly reduce documentation time, leading to improvements in clinician wellbeing and expanding capacity for patient care. Indeed, some studies have shown up to a 20-30% improvement in documentation efficiency. 

So, is AI a cure for physician burnout? The answer depends on what is done with these efficiency gains. If healthcare organizations respond to this enhanced efficiency by increasing patient volume expectations rather than allowing clinicians to recapture some of this time for meaningful work and professional wellbeing, it could create a so-called “workload paradox” where modest time savings are offset by greater productivity demands and the cognitive burden of reviewing AI-generated errors. While AI offers substantial promise as a tool to reduce administrative burdens, its success will depend on thoughtful and responsible implementation that prioritizes clinician well-being and patient safety in addition to productivity.

In our final issue of 2025, we highlight a recent RCT from Annals of Internal Medicine finding that fecal microbiota transplantation is at least as effective as vancomycin in treating primary C. difficile infection. In this month’s Member Spotlight, we feature Andrew Ofosu, MD, MPH (University of Cincinnati Health), who stresses the importance of transparency and compassion in communicating effectively with patients, particularly around complex diagnoses. We hope you enjoy this and all the exciting content in our December issue.

Megan A. Adams, MD, JD, MSc 

Editor in Chief