Combating Physician Burnout and Fostering Wellness in Graduate Medical Education for Resident Physicians

Over the last 2 decades, there has been a cultural shift in the graduate medical education (GME) space, focusing on an important facet: physician burnout. Burnout is defined as a combination of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a lack of personal accomplishment. With increasing awareness of physician burnout, various wellness initiatives have begun to be implemented throughout training programs, and their results have been measured for effectiveness in reducing burnout rates. Due to the increasing rates of burnout emerging throughout GME programs, an initiative to evaluate our internal medicine (IM) residency on this matter was discussed with all residents at forums and yielded several areas where improvement could help reduce burnout. This project aimed to measure the burnout rates among our IM resident physicians using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) self-assessment tool after implementing new wellness initiatives in the GME program.

We sought to actively address the physician burnout phenomenon using a multi-factorial approach that involved several stakeholders and focused on aspects our IM residents outlined during held forums, which included education, financial, physical, mental, and social wellness. Once areas of improvement were identified, steps to improve each field were implemented. The MBI Survey 1 was the primary assessment tool used to measure the rates of burnout after interventions. Survey data were collected, and burnout rates were averaged across postgraduate year (PGY) 1, 2, and 3 residents.

Depersonalization was significantly reduced (P = .0224) for PGY1 residents following intervention. Emotional exhaustion (P = .0014) and depersonalization (P = .0345) were significantly lower for PGY3 residents following interventions. There were no significant changes for PGY2 residents.

Based on preliminary data showing improved outcomes following interventions in various aspects, we aim to grow our wellness initiative using data to guide our efforts to reduce burnout and improve the overall well-being of our residents.