Burnout and endoscopy-specific workload among gastroenterologists and gastroenterology fellows in Türkiye: A national cross-sectional survey

Key Takeaways for GI Nurses

• This national survey from Türkiye highlights that high endoscopic case volume, out-of-hours duties, and administrative burden are measurable, workload-specific contributors to burnout among physicians—dynamics that endoscopy nurses and technicians experience alongside their physician colleagues in the same high-throughput procedure rooms.
• The use of a validated instrument (Copenhagen Burnout Inventory) alongside an endoscopy-specific workload module underscores that burnout in procedural GI settings is not generic—it is tied to concrete, modifiable unit-level factors such as case scheduling, call frequency, and non-clinical documentation demands.
• Because burnout in physicians has downstream effects on team communication, procedural pace, and safety culture, nursing staff should view physician wellbeing data as directly relevant to unit staffing models, shared scheduling practices, and interdisciplinary support structures.
• Findings from high-volume, public-sector-dominant systems like Türkiye's may parallel conditions in busy Western endoscopy units, making this study a useful benchmark for advocating similar workload-burnout assessments among nursing and allied health staff.

Clinical Relevance

Although this study focuses specifically on gastroenterologists and fellows, its implications extend meaningfully into nursing practice within the endoscopy suite. Physician burnout has been consistently linked in the broader literature to reduced procedural vigilance, communication breakdowns, and diminished team cohesion—all factors that directly affect the nurses, technicians, and support staff working shoulder-to-shoulder with physicians during high-volume procedure days. When endoscopists report elevated burnout tied to case volume, call burden, or administrative load, endoscopy nurses are often absorbing parallel or compounding stressors: extended procedure lists, last-minute schedule changes, and increased demands for turnover efficiency between cases.

This research also validates an important operational point: workload-specific burnout indicators (rather than generic occupational stress measures) provide more actionable data for unit leadership. Nurse managers and charge nurses can use this framework as a model for evaluating their own teams—tracking metrics such as procedure volume per shift, frequency of add-on or emergency cases, and time spent on non-clinical tasks like documentation or quality reporting. Understanding that burnout correlates with specific, quantifiable workload elements (rather than being an abstract or purely individual issue) supports evidence-based conversations with administration about staffing ratios, scheduling flexibility, and protected time for non-procedural duties.

From a professional development standpoint, this study offers endoscopy nursing leadership a template for advocating similar assessments within nursing teams. If physician burnout is measurably linked to endoscopy-specific workload variables in a large national sample, it is reasonable to hypothesize that nursing staff—who manage sedation monitoring, instrument reprocessing coordination, and patient throughput—experience comparable or compounding strain. Units that proactively assess and address workload-driven burnout across the entire endoscopy team, not just physicians, are more likely to sustain safety culture, staff retention, and consistent quality of patient care.

Bottom Line

This study reinforces that burnout in high-volume endoscopy settings is closely tied to concrete workload factors—case volume, out-of-hours duties, and administrative demands—rather than being a vague or purely personal issue; GI nurses should recognize these same pressures in their own roles and use this evidence to support team-based conversations about staffing, scheduling, and workload distribution to protect both staff wellbeing and patient care quality.