Interventions to reduce burnout of physicians and nurses: An overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the interventions to reduce burnout of physicians and nurses have been published nowadays. This study aimed to summarize the evidence and clarify a bundled strategy to reduce burnout of physicians and nurses.

Researches have been conducted within Cochrane Library, PubMed, Ovid, Scopus, EBSCO, and CINAHL published from inception to 2019. In addition, a manual search for relevant articles was also conducted using Google Scholar and ancestral searches through the reference lists from articles included in the final review. Two reviewers independently selected and assessed, and any disagreements were resolved through a larger team discussion. A data extraction spreadsheet was developed and initially piloted in 3 randomly selected studies. Data from each study were extracted independently using a pre-standardized data abstraction form. The the Risk of Bias in Systematic reviews and assessment of multiple systematic reviews (AMSTAR) 2 tool were used to evaluate risk of bias and quality of included articles.

A total of 22 studies published from 2014 to 2019 were eligible for analysis. Previous studies have examined burnout among physicians (n = 9), nurses (n = 6) and healthcare providers (n = 7). The MBI was used by majority of studies to assess burnout. The included studies evaluated a wide range of interventions, individual-focused (emotion regulation, self-care workshop, yoga, massage, mindfulness, meditation, stress management skills and communication skills training), structural or organizational (workload or schedule-rotation, stress management training program, group face-to-face delivery, teamwork/transitions, Balint training, debriefing sessions and a focus group) and combine interventions (snoezelen, stress management and resiliency training, stress management workshop and improving interaction with colleagues through personal training). Based on the Risk of Bias in Systematic reviews and AMSTAR 2 criteria, the risk of bias and methodological quality included studies was from moderate to high.

Burnout is a complicated problem and should be dealt with by using bundled strategy. The existing overview clarified evidence to reduce burnout of physicians and nurses, which provided a basis for health policy makers or clinical managers to design simple and feasible strategies to reduce the burnout of physicians and nurses, and to ensure clinical safety.