Emotion Regulation and Burnout in Family Medicine Residents

Although burnout in medicine-particularly medical education-represents an ongoing problem, relatively few studies have established longitudinal connections between burnout and risk factors. Establishment of specific causal links and risk factors will determine important curriculum changes to reduce the risk of burnout in medical learners. Our study aimed to explore links between emotion regulation skill (strategies individuals use to regulate emotional experiences and responses to stress) and vulnerability to burnout using a longitudinal design in one family medicine residency program.

Family medicine residents completed the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) at the beginning of each year (July/August). The residency program collected data over the course of 5 years. All residents consented to participate. We used linear regression analyses to examine postgraduate year-1 DERS scores as a predictor of postgraduate year-2 burnout and postgraduate year-3 burnout.

In this sample of residents, higher scores on the DERS at the first year of residency predicted personal and work-related burnout on the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) at the beginning of the second and third years.

Difficulties with emotion regulation predicted personal burnout in this small sample. This finding dovetails with cross-sectional data in the literature. Although further mechanisms contributing to burnout should be explored, this finding suggests that direct instruction in adaptive emotion regulation strategies delivered early in medical education could provide significant downstream benefits for family medicine residents.