Burned Out at the Bedside: Patient Perceptions of Physician Burnout in an Internal Medicine Resident Continuity Clinic

Capsule Commentary on Lafreniere et al., Burned Out at the Bedside: Patient Perceptions of Physician Burnout in an Internal Medicine Resident Continuity Clinic

“…The revamping of resident duty hour restrictions in 2011, among other goals, was implemented with the intention of limiting physician burnout and therefore improving quality of care provided to patients. 3 Subsequent studies have shown that burnout did not significantly change after the 2011 duty hour restrictions were implemented, 3 which makes this study by Lafreniere et al 1 all the more meaningful. As we continue to tweak duty hours and empower residency leadership to actively focus on reducing resident physician burnout rates, 4 the intended outcomes may be years in the making, and it is important to consider whether resident perceptions of burnout are affecting their delivery of patient care.…”

“…L afreniere et al 1 found that physicians with higher reported rates of depersonalization were perceived as more empathic and enabling by their patients. Also, higher physician emotional exhaustion scores did not significantly correlate with patient perceptions of empathy or enablement.…”

“…1 Given the nature of the study, it is difficult to ascertain whether resident depersonalization is what is being perceived as empathic or enabling by the patient, or whether the strongly empathic residents are those that rate their own emotional exhaustion more critically. It would be useful to establish whether a causal relationship exists between residents reporting higher levels of depersonalization and being perceived as more enabling because they are, in fact, not as emotionally involved in the shared decision-making process, resulting in patient perceptions of increased enablement.…”

How to be a resilient doctor: skills to maximize your antifragility

“…A quarter of doctors in training and a fifth of trainers consider themselves to be burnt out because of their work. Burnout is defined by Lafreniere et al (2016) as 'a chronic state of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment' -this unsatisfactory trio has a negative effect on patient care. A third of trainees said that they are often or always exhausted at the thought of another shift and half of trainees and trainers reported that they often or always feel worn out at the end of their working day.…”

Critical Care Rotation Impact on Pediatric Resident Mental Health and Burnout

“…Resident physicians are at high risk of burnout, with current literature demonstrating prevalence of 50-75% in this population [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Burnout and depression are often coincident; depressive symptoms are present in 50-90% of residents meeting criteria for burnout [5,6,9,11,12].…”