This letter to the editor of The Journal of Emergency Medicine discusses the prevalence of clinician burnout due to crowding and workflow congestion. Future interventions for acute care physicians could include work cycles/schedules that optimize staffing models to adjust for real-time changes in crowding, which may improve clinician well-being, patient outcomes, and health care costs. Other hospital interventions designed to enhance the work-flow in a crowded environment – such as overlapping clinical shifts or the use of scribes – should focus not just on implications for clinical productivity, but also on implications for clinician well-being.