Risk factors for burnout include documentation time pressure and lack of work control
MONDAY, Oct. 19, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Internal medicine physicians and trainees report high levels of career satisfaction but also high levels of burnout, according to a research letter published online Oct. 14 in JAMA Network Open.
Mark Linzer, M.D., from Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, and colleagues surveyed 1,305 internists and internal medicine trainees who participated in the Well-being Champion (WC) program across 18 American College of Physicians (ACP) chapters.
The researchers found that although 71.9 percent of respondents reported career satisfaction, the burnout level was 52.1 percent. Poor or marginal work control was reported by one-third of respondents, and about half reported time pressure associated with electronic medical record (EMR) documentation. Burnout was associated with a lack of work control (odds ratio, 2.32) and documentation time pressure (odds ratio, 1.64). There were associations seen between job satisfaction and alignment of professional values with those of clinical leaders (odds ratio, 4.24) and efficient teamwork (satisfactory to optimal; odds ratio, 2.47). Among women, the odds of burnout were 56 percent higher versus men, and women had 61 percent lower odds of having a joyous workplace, 39 percent lower odds of having supportive work environments, and 61 percent lower odds of having a manageable work pace and manageable EMR-related stress.
“Although the study is also limited by nonrandom sampling, data from this cohort of ACP members may still be generalizable to other populations for assessment of sex-based differences in potential associations between work conditions and burnout,” the authors write.
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