Abstract

PHYSICIAN BURNOUT AND SUBJECT SAFETY, PROFESSIONALISM, AND SATISFACTION

Musaid Sami Albawardi*, Anas Suliman Alkhulaifi, Abdullah Omran Altheneyan, Abdullah Ahmed Alfaifi, Abdulrahman Ibrahim Almotairi, Muath Abdullah Alasheikh

Abstract

Background & Purpose: Burnout in internal medicine (IM) resident physicians takes place usually and might lead to depression and suboptimal medical care. The Aim of this work is to provide cumulative data about the effect of physician burnout on patient safety, professionalism, and satisfaction. Methods: A systematic search was performed of PubMed, Cochrane library Ovid, Scopus & Google scholar to identify Family medicine RCTs, clinical trials, and comparative studies, which studied the outcome of Burnout group versus Control group of physicians. A meta-analysis was done using fixed and random-effect methods. The primary outcome was patient safety incidents. Secondary outcomes were low professionalism outcome (e.g. decreased work hours), and reduced patient satisfaction. Results: A total of 8 studies were identified involving 2979 subjects. Regarding primary outcome measures, the fixed-effects model of the meta-analysis study showed highly significant increase in patient safety incidents in Burnout group compared to Control group (p = 0.001). Regarding secondary outcome measures, the fixed- effects model of the meta-analysis study showed non-significant difference in low professionalism outcome in Burnout group compared to Control group (p > 0.05). The fixed-effects model of the meta-analysis study showed highly significant increase in OR of reduced patient satisfaction in Burnout group compared to Control group (p < 0.01). Conclusion: To conclude, patients may be at a greater risk of suffering a preventable adverse event due to Physician burnout.

Keywords: Physician Burnout, Patient Safety, Professionalism, Satisfaction.