The Impact of Leadership Training on Burnout and Fulfillment Among Direct Reports

Burnout, decreased professional fulfillment, and resultant attrition across the medical professions are increasingly recognized as threats to sustainable and cost-effective healthcare delivery. While the skill level of leaders as perceived by their direct reports has been correlated with rates of burnout and fulfillment, no studies, to our knowledge, have directly evaluated whether intervention via leadership training impacts burnout and fulfillment among direct reports. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a leadership training intervention on direct reports' perceptions of the leadership skills of supervising residents and subsequently on the well-being of the direct reports.

We implemented a leadership training program with supervising (i.e., chief) resident volunteers in two surgical residency programs. The leadership training included two sessions of approximately 2 hours each that consisted of interactive didactic and small group activities. The training focused on the following themes: defining leadership (i.e.,characteristics and behaviors), team building, fostering trust, managing conflict, navigating difficult conversations, and feedback. We administered pretraining and posttraining surveys to the direct reports (i.e., junior residents) to assess the perceived leadership skills of supervising residents, as well as burnout and professional fulfillment.

Leadership scores significantly improved following the leadership training intervention. Additionally, improvement in leadership scores following training was positively correlated with professional fulfillment among the junior residents (direct reports).

The results of this study suggest that incorporating leadership training into residency programs may serve as an appropriate initial intervention to improve the leadership skills of supervising residents, and in turn, improve professional fulfillment and retention among medical professionals. This intervention involved minimal cost and time investment, with potentially significant returns in combating the well-being and attrition crisis. These findings may be applicable across the healthcare field to tackle the impending healthcare worker crisis.