Emotional exhaustion, loss of a purpose, risk of medical errors and a feeling of ineffectiveness. These are just a few symptoms a doctor may have when experiencing physician burnout. According to a study from the Department of Medicine Program on Physician Well-Being at Mayo Clinic, 54 percent of U.S. physicians had at least one symptom of professional burnout in 2014. Projections from the Department of Health and Human Services suggest that by 2020, the U.S. will face a shortage of 50,000 physicians.

Physician burnout has a significant impact on organizational productivity, morale, costs and the quality of care being delivered. In fact, according to an article by Daniela Drake, M.D., MBA, 9 of 10 doctors discourage others from joining the profession, and 300 physicians commit suicide every year.

The discussion from this esteemed panel will include the symptoms of physician burnout; how physician burnout affects patients, the doctor’s staff, colleagues, and the general health care system; and what to do about this major health care crisis.

Thomas Bodenheimer is the founding director of UC San Francisco's Center for Excellence in Primary Care in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and has practiced full-time primary care medicine in San Francisco for 32 years.

Bridget Duffy has been disrupting the status quo in health care for more than 25 years as a physician in the trenches, the first chief experience officer at the Cleveland Clinic, co-founder of the Experience Innovation Network, and the chief medical officer of Vocera. Duffy is a sought-after speaker, discussing why human connections in health care matter and how communication and trusted relationships impact safety, quality, experience and clinical outcomes.

David R. Strand has spent more than 30 years providing executive leadership to some of the nation’s leading health care institutions. Strand is currently an operating partner at Abundant Venture Partners. Prior to joining Abundant, David served as CEO of a number of early stage companies, including ExperiaHealth, one of the nation’s first patient experience improvement companies, which was acquired by Vocera in 2011. Strand has also served as COO of the Cleveland Clinic, the nation’s premier academic medical center; COO of Allina Health System, a leading integrated health system; and CEO of Medica, one of the nation’s largest and most reputable health plans.

Suvas Vajracharya founded Lightning Bolt Solutions Inc. in 2002 and serves as its CEO. Vajracharya has over two decades of education and experience in the research, development and marketing of software products. Prior to 2002, he led a team of engineers in building Internet products at Inktomi Inc. Previously, he was a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked on methods to schedule massively parallel supercomputers for running grand challenge scientific applications.