Prevention of burnout syndrome in physicians: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Physicians are at high risk of developing burnout and several studies have evaluated burnout prevention programs. This meta-analysis and systematic review aimed to assess the effectiveness of burnout prevention programs and to evaluate whether one approach is superior to other programs.

The methods were based on the Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews. We searched the literature in five medical databases from October 2019 to June 2022. We included randomized controlled trials that examined the effect of burnout prevention programs on physicians.

A total of 22 studies were included in our analysis, with 20 studies targeting individual interventions and 2 studies targeting structural interventions. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or similar programs were the most common interventions. The main analysis showed a significant reduction of burnout in the intervention groups with an standardised mean difference (SMD) of -0.32 (95% confidence interval, CI: -0.41 to -0.22), which suggests a small to moderate effect. MBSR did not appear superior to other interventions in the subgroup analysis SMD -0.25 (95% CI: -0.48 to -0.02) versus SMD -0.61 (95% CI: -1.19 to 0.03).

This analysis shows that individual burnout prevention programs may reduce burnout rates in physicians; however, the effect was relatively small. The effect was reduced even further when removing studies causing severe heterogeneity and those with a high risk of bias. Future research programs should focus on structural programs that address the lack of mentoring, rising administrative tasks, or long working hours, which may be more effective in reducing burnout in physicians.