Burnout assessment among pharmacist-academic detailers at the US Veterans Health Administration

Burnout among clinical pharmacist practitioners has been well established, but not among those who perform academic detailing.

To measure burnout among clinical pharmacist practitioners who perform academic detailing (pharmacist-academic detailers) at the United States Veterans Health Administration and compare the findings using 2 validated burnout instruments for healthcare professionals.

A cross-sectional study design was performed to measure burnout in VHA pharmacist-academic detailers across all VA regions between April 2023 and May 2023. Burnout was measured using the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) and a validated single-item burnout measure (SIMB). OLBI has 2 domains (exhaustion and disengagement) and categorizes burnout into Low, Moderate, and High based on scores above or below 1 standard deviation (SD) of the mean. The validated SIMB categorized burnout as having a score of 3 or greater (range: 1-5). Interrater reliability testing between the OLBI and the SIMB at detecting burnout among pharmacist-academic detailers was performed using the kappa test. Correlation between the 2 burnout instruments was assessed using the Spearman rho test.

A total of 50 pharmacist-academic detailers completed the burnout survey. A large proportion of respondents had Moderate levels of burnout for the total (72%) burnout score, disengagement (64%) domain, and exhaustion (74%) domain. In total, 86% of pharmacist-academic detailers reported having Moderate to High levels of burnout on the total OLBI score. On the SIMB, a total of 14 (28%) pharmacist-academic detailers reported having one or more symptoms of burnout. Interrater reliability was considered poor/slight agreement between the OLBI and SIMB. Correlation between the 2 burnout instruments was considered moderately correlated (rho = 0.67, P < 0.001).

This study provides an empirical analysis of burnout among pharmacist-academic detailers; however, the ability to detect burnout among pharmacist-academic detailers may be impacted by the selection of burnout instrument used.