Seven in 10 GPs suffer from compassion fatigue and struggle to empathise with patients because they are worn out from caring for them, a survey has found.
Family doctors say they are so emotionally and physically exhausted from hearing about patients’ problems and circumstances that it is compromising the quality of care they provide.
A poll of 1,855 doctors across the UK found that 71% of GPs and 62% of medics overall have experienced compassion fatigue, which undermines the doctor-patient relationship.
“Compassion fatigue is effectively a hidden, secondary trauma with symptoms that can ultimately make it extraordinarily difficult for family doctors to treat their patients,” said Dr John Holden, the chief medical officer at the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS), which undertook the survey.
GPs are “particularly vulnerable” to the syndrome because of their “prolonged exposure to patients’ suffering and trauma”, and their heavy workloads because the NHS is overloaded, he said.
Holden added: “The extent of compassion fatigue being suffered across all doctors is shocking but the impact on GPs is markedly more pronounced.”
Doctors being too exhausted to provide compassionate care “inevitably has an impact upon patient safety”, he said.
Almost half (44%) of survey participants were concerned that compassion fatigue could leave them more likely to provide unsafe care and face complaints. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of all medics and 77% of GPs said it affected their ability to communicate with patients.
Prof Clare Gerada, an expert in mental health problems among doctors, said compassion fatigue was “often characterised by a decreased ability to empathise and connect with patients, feelings of emotional numbness or detachment, and a sense of being overwhelmed by the job demands”.
Sometimes referred to as “the cost of caring”, it is related to but distinct from stress, burnout and moral injury, which results from doctors not being able to provide the care patients need.
Of the 1,855 doctors asked about their psychological health, 1,147 (62%) said they suffered from compassion fatigue. But a higher proportion of the GPs – 422 out of 597 (71%) – said the same. It was most prevalent among younger doctors aged 25 to 34.
MDDUS also found that:
21% of medics had thought about self-harm or suicide at least once.
85% of GPs who had had suicidal feelings blamed that on the impact of their job.
84% of GPs experienced verbal abuse and 24% physical abuse by patients during 2024.
Long waits for care (79%) and complaints about care (51%) were the most common reasons.
“The findings are incredibly upsetting but not surprising,” said Dr Latifa Patel, the British Medical Association’s workforce lead.
She added: “They point to the known mental health crisis among NHS staff. Doctors’ wellbeing shouldn’t suffer from going to work, especially to such an extent that they’re self-harming or considering suicide. GPs are at breaking point and burnout is felt throughout the profession.”
Gerada, an ex-chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and founder of the charity Doctors in Distress, said: “Compassion fatigue can negatively impact performance, morale and staff retention.”
She added that MDDUS’s “appalling” findings showed that the unrelenting demands of health professionals’ jobs meant they needed to receive “psychological personal protection” – where they could talk confidentially about their experience and support one another.
Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the current RCGP chair, said the results tallied with recent research the organisation undertook that found 22% of family doctors were so stressed they felt they could not cope on average once or twice a week.
GPs also suffered “moral distress”, where they felt they could not help patients because of non-medical factors outside their control – such as poor housing, the cost of living and NHS waiting lists – she added.
The government’s drive to reform the NHS may face obstacles, the findings also suggested. Two-thirds of GPs (66%) said their practice was “not at all prepared” for the “strategic shift” of healthcare from hospitals into the community that Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has pledged.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The wellbeing of all those working in the NHS is vital, and extensive coaching support and practitioner mental health services are available for all staff.
“We are providing support for GPs to lessen their workload, through cutting red tape to reduce bureaucracy and reducing outdated performance targets – so they can spend more time with patients and doing the work that really matters.
“The budget also provided an extra £26m to open new mental health crisis centres and funding to provide talking therapies to an extra 380,000 patients.”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
