Assessment of burnout among postgraduate pharmacy residents: A pilot study

Health professional burnout has become a topic of growing interest given increased focus on mental health and well-being. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) has been commonly utilized to quantify health professional burnout, but the literature does not report burnout among pharmacy residents. The objective of this study was to quantify burnout status of pharmacy residents and to correlate burnout to professional conduct and career outlook.

Pharmacy residents completed an electronic, anonymous survey at a teaching and learning certificate meeting date. Burnout status was measured by a high score on either the emotional exhaustion or depersonalization subscales of the MBI-HSS tool.

Forty-three of 58 surveys were completed (response rate 74.1%). The burnout rate among residents was 74.4%. No significant differences were seen in baseline demographics, except burned out subjects were more likely to report a "single" relationship status. Activities such as using sick days when not ill, falling asleep at work, overlooking others' breaches of institutional guidelines, and failure to follow-up in a timely fashion were significantly correlated to burnout status with moderate correlation coefficients.

The point prevalence of burnout among pharmacy residents is similar to that documented for practicing pharmacists and physicians. Expansion to a larger, more diverse sample size would provide additional power to differentiate independent risk factors for burnout and to better quantify associations to professional conduct among pharmacy residents.