K5 – Addressing Perceived Stress and Burnout in Healthcare Providers: Piloting a Low Dose Guided Self Help Intervention in an Inpatient Hospital Setting

Summary

Medical and mental health professionals are among the top five professions who are most prone to burnout in the United States. Burnout is characterized by emotional depletion and loss of motivation resulting from prolonged exposure to chronic emotional and interpersonal stress. Burnout among helping professionals is associated with poorer quality of healthcare delivery and reduced patient safety. Efforts to address workplace burnout have been mixed. One challenge often reported is finding effective interventions that fit the needs of a busy clinical setting that has limited time for broad-based staff training. One model that has received increased attention over the past decade is the Community Resiliency Model (CRM). CRM is a 30-hour low dose guided self-help intervention aimed at teaching health workers a set of skills geared toward increasing resiliency and reducing distress both of which are significant components of burnout. Previous use of the CRM model has focused on first responders working in the aftermath of disaster and traumatic situations. However, in this study, the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) training was adapted into a single 3-hour session training session with an additional 1-hour booster session delivered 3 months after the initial training. The training focused on the same six CRM skills that have been found to promote individual resilience and stress reduction. Participants included nurses, social workers, physical therapists, residents, and other care providers. Respondents were ethnically diverse and primarily female, highly educated, and married. An adapted version of the Physician Vitality Measure (PVM) 4-item burnout subscale was used to measure burnout. Paired sample t-tests were conducted to explore differences between the pre and immediate post and the pre and after booster posttest burnout scores. Although there were no significant mean score differences between the pre and after program post-test, there was a significant decrease in burnout and perceived stress scores between the baseline and after the booster session. Our results suggest that a low dose resiliency intervention that teaches wellness skills is a promising and sustainable approach that fits within the demands of clinical settings and can be used to address perceived stress and burnout among helping professionals.