Substantial prevalence of burnout seen in rheumatologists

Burnout is considerably prevalent among rheumatology practitioners, with a little more than half of the respondents and physicians meeting the criteria in at least one domain defined by the Maslach Burnout Index (MBI), a study has found.

“Burnout among physicians is common and has important implications,” said the authors, who assessed the extent of burnout among rheumatology practitioners and its associations in this study.

A demographics questionnaire and the MBI were used to survey 128 attendees at the 2019 Rheumatology Winter Clinical Symposium, with scores for emotional exhaustion (EE) ≥27, depersonalization (DP) ≥10, and personal accomplishment (PA) ≤33 deemed positive for burnout.

The authors collected data on practitioner characteristics, including age, sex, years in practice, and other demographics of interest, which they used to determine prevalence and interaction of interest between practitioner characteristics and the risk of burnout.

Of the 128 respondents, 50.8 percent exhibited burnout in at least one MBI domain.

Dissatisfaction with electronic health records correlated with a 2.86-times higher likelihood of burnout (odds ratio [OR], 2.86, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.23–6.65; p=0.015). Results were similar for lack of exercise (OR, 5.00, 95 percent CI, 1.3–18.5; p=0.016) and work hours >60 per week (OR, 2.6, 95 percent CI, 1.16–5.6; p=0.019).

Practitioners in group practice were significantly less likely to experience burnout (OR, 0.43, 95 percent CI, 0.20–0.92; p=0.029), as were those who spend >20 percent of their time in personally satisfying work (OR, 0.32, 95 percent CI, 0.15–0.71; p=0.005).