Assessing physician wellness: Preventing burnout and promoting well–being

Burnout is a response to high stress levels, and occupational restraints, assessed as high emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and compassion fatigue, and reduced personal accomplishment and compassion satisfaction. It is highly prevalent among healthcare professionals and can negatively affect their well-being, work, and clients. Accordingly, wellness needs to be addressed on multiple levels. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of burnout and the contributing factors to healthcare providers’ well-being to develop recommendations to promote their wellness. One hundred forty-two healthcare providers completed six assessments; the Maslach Burnout Inventory - MBI-HSS (MP), the Areas of Worklife Scale (AWS), the Professional Quality of Life Measure (ProQOL), the Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ), the Sense of Community Index 2 (SCI 2), and a COVID-19 attitudes & experience questionnaire. Findings showed high scores on the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scales, yet high scores on personal accomplishment. Same for ProQoL, participants showed high compassion satisfaction. Workload has increased during COVID-19, which increased burnout. Fairness, reward, community, and values incongruence contribute to burnout, among other factors. Burnout prevention is beneficial and needs to be done on both the individual and the organizational levels. To be effective and long-lasting, well-being needs to be comprehensive on all levels; individual, organizational, and environmental. The constant pursuit of wellness and resource provision needs to be available for healthcare providers; while destigmatizing mental health and burnout.

Author

• Shahin, Hana

Identifier

hdl:10057/21576

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:soar.wichita.edu:10057/21576