Study: High Prevalence of Physician Burnout Among Emergency Medicine Residents Across the U.S.

In March 2017, our ALiEM Wellness Think Tank launched an ambitious initiative to try to identify the prevalence rate of U.S. emergency medicine (EM) resident burnout across the country. No study to date had been done to assess this. Amazingly we got a response from over 1,500 confirmed U.S. EM residents from 193 residency programs purely through our social media, email listservs, and Wellness Think Tank outreach efforts. We measured burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS). This 22-item MBI-HSS is the most common, validated tool used to measure burnout in healthcare professionals. It assesses 3 subscale domains:

• Emotional exhaustion (EE), which means being emotionally depleted at work
• Depersonalization (DP), which means a lack of feelings or negative, cynical feelings towards others
• Personal accomplishment (PA), which is a positive sense of self-evaluation and success at work.

A combination of high EE, high DP, and/or low PA scores are correlated with burnout.^1,2 This post reviews some of the highlights from our study, High Prevalence of Burnout among Emergency Medicine Residents across the US, which was recently accepted by Annals of Emergency Medicine and published online.³

Results

Demographics

1,522 residents (21.1% of all U.S. EM residents) responded to the survey, representing 193 of 247 (78.1%) U.S. EM residency programs.

Result: 76% of residents are burned out

We applied the most accepted definition of burnout, which is defined as showing high levels of emotional exhaustion or depersonalization.

Result: EM resident physician burnout may be different from general physician burnout

The causes of burnout may not be the same for residents and practicing physicians. 72.5% of residents in our study reported a high degree of depersonalization versus lower depersonalization scores reported in other studies of attending emergency physicians (38.9%)⁴ and in other specialties (34.6%).⁵ We hypothesize that this more negative and cynical attitude towards patients results from working more clinical hours in the Emergency Department as a resident; having a greater clerical burden; and interacting more with consultants, admitting services, and ancillary staff as a trainee.^4,6

Result: Intern burnout rates are lower than those of more senior residents

Uniquely, PGY-1 residents had the lowest levels of burnout at 75%, followed by PGY-3+ (83%) and PGY-2 (85%). These first-year residents are typically less often working in the ED and instead are on off-service rotations. They presumably have less clinical responsibilities, are not as responsible for ED throughput in the face of overcrowding, and typically do not manage high-acuity patients.

Bottom line and next steps

• We now know that physician burnout in EM often begins during residency training, although it may be slightly less during intern year. We report that 76% of U.S. EM residents are burned out. This ranks among the highest rates of resident burnout across specialties.
• This national survey provides baseline prevalence data on U.S. EM residents that has not been available before. As more and more programs are focusing on wellness and burnout, we hope to repeat this survey periodically to track national burnout rate trends. This data can be used to inform future individual, programmatic, and systems-level interventions.
• This study and publication would not be possible without the help of:
  • US Acute Care Solutions as the exclusive sponsor of the Wellness Think Tank
  • Hippo Education and Emergent Medical Associates for helping to fund gift cards and prizes to incentivize survey completion
  • CORD and EMRA for allowing us to post the announcement of this survey on their listservs.
  • William Briggs and Newton Addo-Otoo for their statistical help
  • The tireless work of the entire 2017-18 Wellness Think Tank members

References