Resilience among Employed Physicians and Mid‐Level Practitioners in Upstate New York

Abstract

Objective. To investigate the factors associated with resilience among medical professionals. Data Sources/Study Setting. Administrative information from a rural health care network (1 academic medical center, 6 hospitals, 31 clinics, and 20 school health centers) was triangulated with self-report data from 308 respondents (response rate = 65.1 percent) to a 9/2013-1/2014 survey among practitioners serving a nine-county 5,600-square-mile area. Study Design. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey comprising valid measures of resilience, practice meaningfulness, satisfaction, and risk/uncertainty intolerance, nested within a prospective, community-based project. Data Collection/Extraction Methods. The sampling frame included practitioners on institutional payroll, excluding voluntary/involuntary attritions and advisory board/research team members. In multivariable mixed-effects models, we regressed full-range and high-/low-resilience scores on demographics, professional satisfaction, workplace needs, risk/uncertainty intolerance, and service unit characteristics. Principal Findings. Relational needs, uncertainty intolerance, satisfaction ≥75 percent of the time, number of practitioners on a unit, and workload were significantly associated with resilience. Higher scores were most strongly associated with uncertainty tolerance, satisfaction, and practitioner numbers. Practitioner/unit demographics were mostly nonsignificant. Conclusions. More resilient practitioners experienced frequent satisfaction, relational needs gratification, better uncertainty tolerance, lighter workloads, and practiced on units with more colleagues. Further studies should investigate well-being interventions based on these mutable factors.

Resilience in medical doctors: a systematic review

“…Similar influences of personality were confirmed in Waddimba et al's [24] study of New York physicians and Cooke et al's [20] study of Australian general practitioners (GPs).…”

“…The study by Bird et al [21] into resilience in American internal medicine residents was not able to analyse demographic associations with resilience due to a poor response to demographic questions. Eight of the other nine studies found that demographic variables (such as age, gender or marital status) had no influence on resilience scores [19][20]22,[24][25][26][27][28]. One study, by Eley et al [23] of rural general practitioners in Australia found that the oldest group of doctors (aged 52-61 years) had higher resilience levels (p=0.01).…”

“…For doctors, the influence of social support in both a professional and a personal capacity were identified across the review as important factors in determining resilience. [24,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Quantitatively, Waddimba et al's [24] study of New York physicians that scored doctors for resilience and assessed unit characteristics reported that clinicians who worked on a smaller clinical unit (<5 practitioners) scored significantly lower for resilience than those who worked on larger units. Waddimba concluded from this that the social support of colleagues was an important determinant of a doctor's resilience.…”

“…Only two studies in particular investigated environmental influences on resilience scores. [24,26] However, many of the qualitative studies identified organisational factors as important in influencing doctor's resilience. [34][35]38] Waddimba et al's.…”

Kiégés és reziliencia (rugalmas ellenállás) a magyarországi orvosok körében

“…Waddimba és mtsai vizsgálatukban úgy találták, hogy a nagyobb rezilienciával jellemezhető orvosok bizonytalanságtűrése magasabb, elégedettebbek a munkájukkal és kollegiális támogatásukkal. Jelen vizsgálatunk eredményeihez hasonlóan, a demográfiai faktoroknak és a munkakörnyezet jellemzőinek nem volt kimutatható hatása a reziliencia alakulására [39].…”