Relationship between burnout and mistreatment: Who plays a role?

Surgery residents have high burnout rates and mistreatment occurs during training. We hypothesized that residents who reported mistreatment would be more likely to experience burnout.

A multi-institutional observational study asked residents to complete the Maslach Burnout Inventory and to rate how often they experienced mistreatment. Scores in the high-risk range for emotional exhaustion or depersonalization were classified as burnout. Associations between mistreatment behaviors, program, sex, post graduate year(PGY), and clinical status were measured by Spearman's correlation, linear regression, and logistic regression.

We invited 398 residents to participate; 180 responded(45%). 52%(n = 93) were female, there was an even distribution among PGY, and seven programs were represented. Almost half of the cohort (48%) reported high risk for burnout and 68% reported experiencing mistreatment. Mistreatment by senior physician team members were correlated with EE(rho = 0.184,p = 0.016) and DP(rho = 0.181,p = 0.016).

While overall burnout was not significantly associated with mistreatment behaviors, both burnout and mistreatment were commonly reported.