Burnout among NHS doctors isn’t new, and the numbers back that up. The GMC’s National Training Survey has found that roughly six in ten doctors in training are at moderate to high risk of burnout, a figure that’s barely moved since 2022. Workloads are heavy, rotas are stretched thin, and emotional exhaustion runs through nearly every specialty.
But there’s one group that tends to do better than average: doctors who keep a regular teaching role alongside their clinical work. Research published in BMC Medical Education found that physicians with academic affiliations, including regular teaching roles, had lower odds of daily emotional exhaustion and reported greater career satisfaction than non-affiliated peers. More time spent teaching showed a trend towards lower burnout, though this specific finding didn’t reach statistical significance.
A separate study in the same journal found that doctors who felt confident and well-equipped as teachers reported higher professional fulfilment and lower burnout. Together, the evidence suggests that it’s not just teaching itself, but doing it well and willingly that makes the difference.
So what is it about teaching that seems to guard against burnout? Let’s examine the main reasons…
A Different Kind of Working Day
One of the biggest drivers of burnout is doing the same high-pressure thing over and over again. When every shift is back-to-back clinical decisions with real consequences, there’s very little room to come up for air. Teaching breaks that cycle. Running a bedside tutorial, supervising a trainee in a clinic, or putting together a short presentation for grand rounds all use a different part of your brain. You’re still working hard, but the demands are different.
That variety matters more than people give it credit for. It gives your week some rhythm that pure clinical work often can’t. Even a couple of hours of teaching each week can be enough to take the edge off the grinding repetition that wears doctors down over time.
Mentoring Offers a Different Relationship
Clinical work revolves around one kind of relationship: doctor and patient. It’s rewarding, but it’s also emotionally draining and often one-directional. You give, the patient receives, and whether things go well isn’t always up to you.
Teaching creates something different. When you’re working with a trainee, you’re building something together over weeks or months. You’ll watch them pick up a skill, correct a misunderstanding they’ve been carrying around, or grow more confident with a procedure that used to make them nervous. That kind of ongoing professional connection is energising, and it’s something a lot of doctors simply don’t get from patient care alone.
How Doctors Build the Teaching Skills That Deliver These Benefits
Most doctors don’t get taught how to teach. Knowing your subject inside out and being able to explain it clearly to a student are two completely different skills. That gap is exactly why dedicated training programmes exist. A structured Teach the Teacher course for doctors will typically cover learning theory, session planning, how to give constructive feedback, and how to manage group dynamics. These are practical tools that make the difference between a session that drains you and one that actually gives you energy and motivation to improve yourself and those around you.
Without that grounding, teaching can end up being just another task bolted onto an already packed day. With it, you’re properly equipped to do it well, which means you’re far more likely to enjoy it and stick with it.
A Sense of Contribution Beyond the Ward
Clinical work has an obvious, immediate impact, but it can also start to resemble a treadmill. You treat today’s patients, and tomorrow there’ll be more. Teaching gives you a longer view. The registrar you helped prepare for their OSCE, or the foundation doctor who finally clicked with how to structure a referral, will carry that with them for years.
That sense of contributing to the profession’s future gives many doctors a feeling of purpose that clinical work, on its own, doesn’t always deliver. It’s a reminder that your experience and expertise count for something beyond what happens in the consulting room on any given Tuesday.
More Than a Line on Your Portfolio
Teaching often gets treated as a box-ticking exercise for training applications and portfolio evidence. But the research suggests it’s doing something deeper than that. Doctors who teach tend to report higher career satisfaction and lower emotional exhaustion. And while there’s no single study proving that teaching doctors stay in post longer, the link between professional satisfaction and retention is well established in NHS workforce research.
That doesn’t mean teaching will fix the structural problems behind NHS burnout. Heavy workloads, rota gaps and underfunding won’t disappear because someone runs a few more tutorials. But for individual doctors who want to protect their own wellbeing within a demanding system, building a regular teaching practice is one of the most effective things they can do.
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Our Editorial Team are writers and experts in their field. Their views and opinions may not always be the views of Wellbeing Magazine. If you are under the direction of medical supervision please speak to your doctor or therapist before following the advice and recommendations in these articles.
