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    Reducing burnout and anxiety among doctors: randomized controlled trial

    Medisauskaite, Asta and Kamau, Caroline (2019) Reducing burnout and anxiety among doctors: randomized controlled trial. Psychiatry Research 274 , pp. 383-390. ISSN 0165-1781.

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    Abstract

    Prevalence studies show high levels of burnout, anxiety, fatigue and other symptoms of distress among medical doctors. However, there are very few randomized controlled trials testing interventions against these problems. This randomized controlled trial (NCT02838290; ClinicalTrials.gov, 2016) tested interventions teaching 227 doctors about the psychology of burnout, stress, coping with patient death, and managing distress, as well as giving them information about prevalence rates among doctors. Primary outcomes included burnout, anxiety, insomnia, grief, alcohol/drug use, binge eating, physical symptoms, and psychiatric morbidity. The outcomes were tested before and after the interventions with a 7-day time-lag. The intervention significantly decreased doctors’ levels of burnout (e.g. emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) and anxiety. Doctors in the control group had no significant changes in these signs of distress. The intervention did not significantly reduce other health and habit-related outcomes potentially because these need a longer time-lag than 7 days. Interventions teaching doctors about the psychology of work-related distress reduce burnout and anxiety by helping doctors realize that distress is a normal, human reaction to external stressors, common in medicine, and solvable by learning about psychological coping strategies. Key words: Binge-eating; insomnia; intervention; physical symptoms; stress.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Anxiety, Binge-eating, Burnout, Distress, Insomnia, Intervention, Medical doctors, Mental health, Occupational health, Occupational medicine, Psychiatry, Stress, NHS
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Research Centres and Institutes: Medical Humanities, Centre for
    Depositing User: Caroline Kamau
    Date Deposited: 05 Mar 2019 11:15
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:49
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/26546

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