Highlights
- •Key Finding: Despite numerous departmental initiatives intended to improve culture, workplace efficiency, work-life balance, and personal wellness, self-reported burnout among academic medical center radiologists showed no measurable improvement over time.
- •Importance: Physician and employee wellness embedded into institutional culture may be more effective than local departmental improvement initiatives.
Rationale and Objectives
Few studies have examined what constitutes effective interventions to reduce burnout
among radiologists. We compared self-reported burnout among academic medical center
radiologists before and after a series of departmental initiatives intended to increase
wellbeing and professional satisfaction.
Materials and Methods
This Institutional Review Board-approved, prospective study took place 2017-2019 in
a tertiary academic medical center. In pre- (2017) and post-intervention (2019) periods,
we administered the previously-validated Stanford Physician Wellness Survey to faculty
in our 11-division radiology department. Faculty rated their burnout level across
8 domains (professional fulfillment, emotional exhaustion, interpersonal disengagement,
sleep difficulties, self-compassion, negative work impact on personal relations, organizational/personal
values alignment, perceived quality of supervisory leadership). Between the two surveys,
departmental initiatives focusing on culture, team building, work-life balance, and
personal well-being were implemented (e.g., electronic medical record training, shorter
work hours). Pre- and post-survey results were compared, using Whitney-Mann U test
to calculate Z scores.
Results
Faculty members rated lower professional fulfillment (Z-3.04, p=0.002), higher emotional exhaustion (Z=2.52, p=0.012), increased sleep-related impairment (Z=2.38, p=0.012), and reduced organizational/personal values alignment (Z=-4.10, p<0.0001) between the two surveys. No significant differences were identified associated
with interpersonal disengagement (Z=1.82, p=0.069), self-compassion (Z=1.39, p=0.164), negative impact of work on personal relationship (Z=0.89, p=0.372) and perceived supervisory leadership quality (Z=0.07, p=0.942).
Conclusion
Despite numerous departmental initiatives intended to improve culture, workplace efficiency,
work-life balance, and personal wellness, self-reported burnout was unchanged or worsened
over time.Physician and employee wellness embedded into institutional culture maybe
more effective than departmental improvement initiatives.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 05, 2022
Accepted:
June 13,
2022
Received in revised form:
June 8,
2022
Received:
April 11,
2022
Footnotes
All authors substantially contributed to the design of the work, the writing of the manuscript, and approved the final version of the manuscript and are accountable for the manuscript's contents.
The authors declare that we had full access to all the data in this study and we take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 The Association of University Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
