2nd Year Residents More at Risk of Burnout?

Given today’s heightened sensitivity about physician burnout, a concerned team of researchers from NYU Langone Health has taken a deep dive into orthopedic resident burnout.

Their study, “Orthopaedic Resident Burnout Is Associated with Poor In-Training Examination Performance,” appears in the October 2, 2019 edition of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. 

Kenneth Egol, M.D., chief of the Division of Orthopedic Trauma and director of the Orthopedic Surgery Residency Program at NYU Langone Health, explained this important new study to OTW, “Physician wellness and burnout are hot topics in medicine now. Studies have demonstrated high rates of depersonalization and suicide in demanding fields such as surgery. We sought to identify the level of burnout in our training program. One that we consider to be very attentive to the needs of our trainees and provide a lot of support.”

In order to quantify the level of burnout, the research team looked at a cross-sectional study of 62 orthopedic surgery residents at a single large academic institution, all of whom completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI).

The research team found that 25.8% (16) of the residents reported “at least moderate emotional exhaustion,” while 51.6% (32) of the residents said they experienced “at least moderate depersonalization” and 12.9% (8) reported “a moderate sense of impaired personal accomplishment.”

Who had the highest emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scores? Postgraduate year-two residents.

When compared to residents in other years of training, the 2nd-year post grad residents reported through their Maslach Burnout Inventory scores that they were experiencing each of the three indices of burnout and subsequently diminished in-training performance—when controlling for general test-taking ability.

Dr. Egol summarized the results from the study to OTW, “Our junior residents have a high rate of burnout and depersonalization, especially in the early years of training. This probably represents difficulty in transition from student to doctor.”

Asked what concerns him most about resident burnout, he noted, “Orthopedic surgery attracts the best and brightest medical students. They are the hardest working people and have been their entire lives. Perhaps we are not doing a good enough job at teaching coping skills for difficult times and adversity in these young physicians.”

“Burnout exists in all of our trainees. A poor OITE [Orthopaedic In-Training Examination] score may be the first and only objective sign something is going on. The program leadership should look deeper into these performances for other signs of trouble.”