Battling Intensivist Burnout: A Role for Workload Management.

Area of Science:

• Critical Care Medicine
• Occupational Health
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Burnout syndrome is a significant threat to the critical care workforce.
• It stems from chronic workload and workforce capacity imbalances.
• Current countermeasures focus on increasing worker resilience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of workload management tools in addressing burnout.
• To explore the relationship between workload and burnout, particularly during electronic health record (EHR) implementation.
• To complement resilience-based strategies with workload reduction measures.

Main Methods:

• Examined specialty-specific burnout prevalence increases during EHR adoption.
• Compared burnout rates with changes in documentation length pre- and post-EHR implementation.
• Extracted task volume and completion times from EHR to calculate ICU workforce efficiency.

Main Results:

• A robust direct association was found between increased documentation tasks and self-reported burnout.
• ICU workforce efficiency, calculated as mandatory task time to scheduled time, indicated excessive workload.
• The calculated workload placed ICU staff at significant risk of burnout syndrome.

Conclusions:

• Reducing time spent on mandatory ICU tasks is essential for effective burnout prevention.
• Workload management tools should complement resilience-based countermeasures.
• Addressing the root causes of excessive workload is critical for staff well-being.