A study of the relationship between resilience, burnout and coping strategies in doctors

Abstract

Despite high levels of resilience, doctors had high levels of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Doctors suffering from burnout were more likely to use maladaptive coping mechanisms. As doctors already have high resilience, improving personal resilience further may not offer much benefit to professional quality of life. A national study of professional Quality of Life, Coping And REsilience, which we are proposing to undertake, will for the first time assess the UK and Ireland medical workforce in this regard and guide future targeted interventions to improve professional quality of life.

Availability and Utility of Peer Review and Emotional Support for Paediatricians Involved in Safeguarding in the UK

“…Continuing occupational exposure to traumatising material without adequate support may therefore lead not only to compassion fatigue or burnout, but potentially to transformative mental health disorders among healthcare professionals (Anderson, ; Bennett et al ., ; McGarry et al ., ; Robins et al ., ). Importantly, these risks persist despite the high levels of personal resilience measured in UK doctors, suggesting only a limited role for training to improve resilience skills (McCain et al ., ).…”

Resilience: Five minutes with . . . Nicola McKinley

“…Our team at Queen’s University Belfast ran a survey in a single NHS trust in Northern Ireland in August 2016. Overall 283 doctors were surveyed and we found that, despite being resilient, 37% of them were still really burnt out and 72% had high traumatic stress from their job 1. So we’ve proved that, in our trust, despite being resilient, people are burnout.…”

Thriving, not just surviving: Well‐being in emergency medicine

“…Despite being regarded as having high levels of resilience, the literature suggests that doctors are generally fairly poor at our own self‐care, and experience a high rate of maladaptive coping strategies, burnout and secondary trauma . The 2016 ACEM Workforce Sustainability Survey reported that more than one‐third of FACEMs and trainees were experiencing symptoms consistent with burnout.…”

“…Emergency medicine clinicians are exposed to a number of work‐related stressors, including inadequate staffing levels, administrative performance indicators, emotionally difficult cases, increasing patient expectations, conflict with colleagues, physiological stress of shift work and the threat of violence from patients or visitors . A relatively recent pressure affecting trainees and new FACEMs is workforce maldistribution, with a lack of consultant jobs in areas where most trainees live and work…”

“…5 The relationship between resilience and burnout can be thought of as one occurring on opposite ends of a spectrum of well-being. 13 Building resilience is the mechanism by which we protect ourselves against burnout.…”