PRP025: Assessing the effects of COVID-19 on Faculty Well-Being and Burnout

Timothy Riley, MD; Eric Messner, PhD, FNP-BC; James Tucker, MD; CURTIS BONE, MD, MHS; Jessica Parascando; Christina LaGamma

Abstract

Context: Burnout is highly prevalent among primary care providers and residents, with negative consequences including medical errors, depression, suicidality, and the decision to leave medical practice. The current COVID pandemic has resulted in elevated stress for individuals around the world and recent studies have demonstrated increased mental strain on health care providers. The Department of Family & Community Medicine (FCM) is committed to reducing burnout in an effort to optimize provider well-being, retention, quality of care, and patient safety. Objective: The Department is conducting an online survey to assess provider wellness/burnout, quality of life, and job satisfaction. Our goal is to generate new initiatives to enhance the well-being of providers and faculty in the Department of FCM that may be applicable to other venues. Study Design: Mixed methods. Setting: Suburban university-based academic medical center. Population: Faculty, advanced practice providers, and residents in department of FCM. Intervention: Providers in FCM will be invited to voluntarily participate in a departmental online REDCap survey, which will assess burnout and will include both quantitative and qualitative questions regarding quality of life, job satisfaction, and basic demographics. Outcome measures: Quantitative measures will assess level of burnout, quality of life, work-home conflict, likelihood of leaving job, perceived risk of harm from workplace exposure to COVID-19, and perceived risk of harm to family members due to provider workplace exposure to COVID-19. Qualitative measures will include open-ended questions to explore general provider experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; how COVID-19 has impacted overall feelings of well-being and burnout; and workplace and employer efforts to enhance well-being and address/mitigate feelings of burnout. Conclusions: The investigators will evaluate the quantitative survey data to determine the overall percentage of burnout amongst FCM clinicians as well as level of burnout, and demographic characteristics. Results will be compared with baseline data from 2018. Participant’s perceptions of how COVID-19 has impacted their well-being, key drivers of dissatisfaction and burnout, elements that promote well-being; and general provider concerns in the post-pandemic era will be explored through qualitative analysis.
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Megan Mendez Miller
mmendezmiller@pennstatehealth.psu.edu 11/21/2020

It would be interested to re-eval the effects of COVID-19 and burnout and work-home conflict over the more recent months now that the healthcare community is "no longer on lockdown". Any plans on assessing that?

Tim Riley
triley1@pennstatehealth.psu.edu 11/22/2020

Thanks for your thoughts!  We would love to reassess since the situation keeps changing month to month, but need to continuously juggle the desire for information with survey fatigue and the whether we can make changes for our community based on the results.

Shou Ling Leong
sleong@pennstatehealth.psu.edu 11/22/2020

Nice study. There has been a study in the department that looked at work-family conflict, which could provide additional baseline data. It would be interesting to look at if and how COVID may have change that.

Susan Veldheer
sveldheer@psu.edu 11/22/2020

There has been a lot of chatter on social media about how working women, especially working moms, are feeling pulled in too many directions... employee, child-caregiver, teacher for online school, cook, housekeeper. I'm getting stressed just typing this! I bet within your qual data, you have some real gems from women who are feeling this pinch! Would be really interesting to see if there are gender differences in qual responses!

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