Impact of an intervention program to improve well-being of residents in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

IntroductIonFor many postgraduates, residency can be a major source of stress and fatigue which may have a significant impact on residents' ability to care for themselves and their patients. [1][2][3] Physicians spend on an average between 3 and 7 years of their life in residency. [1][2][3] The age between 28 and 33 is the time many individuals would complete their education and proceed to start their own families. [1][2][3] For many residents, residency training forms a barrier to satisfactory transition through this period. [1][2][3] Moreover, residency training is linked to decline in residents' well-being indicators, including sleep, exercise, family interactions, and religious activity and an increase in missing significant events. [1][2][3] Residents, especially in the early years of training, are particularly vulnerable to burnout, with a prevalence rate ranging from 27% to 75%. [1][2][3] The adverse influences of burnout on patient care include medical errors, patient safety risks, and deterioration in the quality of care. [1][2][3] These observations highlighted the importance of early identification of the stressful precipitators of burnout and encouraged the American Medical Association and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to stress the importance of monitoring and boosting well-being among clinicians-in-training. [4] The hope was to decrease residents' fatigue and comply with the ACGME released requirements that limit resident working hours to no more than an average of 80 h/week. [2] Two studies from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirmed high rates of impaired well-being and increased rates of burnout among the residency program. [5,6] However, there Background: Residency is a stressful period in physicians' life. During this period, residents are subjected to fatigue, depression, anxiety, and burnout. In 2016, we did our first study in Abu Dhabi hospitals to investigate residents' well-being; we found that 86.4% of residents were stressed, 50.8% of them were depressed, and 65.7% of the residents felt emotionally exhausted. Following this study, we introduced interventions to improve residents' well-being in Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) residency programs. Objectives: To assess the difference between the well-being of residents in the year 2018 compared to 2016 after the implementation of interventions to SKMC residents. Methods: Following the initial cross-sectional surveys, interventions were made to improve residents' well-being. Repeated cross-sectional surveys were done to compare between the two periods and quantify the change. Results: The percentage of nonsmokers increased in phase 2 from 90% to 94%. The percentage of residents who exercise 1-2 times a week increased from 37.6% to 40.7%. The prevalence of perceived depression was 80% in phase 1 and become 82.4% in phase 2. In phase 1, 89% felt emotionally exhausted compared to 85.5% in phase 2. 28.3% and 22.4% of the residents felt always stressed in phase 1 and 2, respectively. The percentage of residents...

Skills-Based Programs Used to Reduce Physician Burnout in Graduate Medical Education: A Systematic Review

“…These studies included all study designs (single study, control trials), various teaching methods and program structure, lengths of the program, and curriculum content. Seven programs occurred during protected education time, 15,26,31 3 programs occurred outside of the residents' protected education time, 14,32,33 and 1 program required residents to participate in modules outside of the workday in addition to program participation during protected time. 34 Two programs did not report when the training took place.…”