Burnout amongst radiologists: A bibliometric study from 1993 to 2020

Burnout amongst radiologists is common in many different institutions and is increasing day by day. To battle burnout, we have to address the root causes already recognized in published literature. Therefore, it is crucial to examine and discern important publications.

To provide evidence-based data and trends related to burnout in radiologists so that researchers can work on it further and develop preventive strategies to overcome this problem.

Bibliometric analysis conducted by two independent reviewers separately used Scopus Library for data extraction by using medical subject heading and International Classification of Diseases keywords. Forty-nine articles were selected for analysis after an extensive scrutiny. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20 was used for analysis. Pearson correlation coefficient, Kruskal Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney U test were applied.

The most productive period with regards to the number of publications was between 2017 and 2019. A total of 160 authors contributed to the topic burnout among radiologists, with an average of 3.26 authors per paper. About 41.68% of the authors were female, whilst 35% of them were first authors. The co-citation analysis by author involved 188 cited authors, 13 of whom were cited at least 70 times. Only six out of forty-nine studies were funded by various government institutions and non-governmental organizations.

Current analysis casts a spotlight on important trends being witnessed in regard to the mental health of radiologists, including lack of funding for mental health research, narrowing of female vs male citation gap, as well as authorship and citation trends.