Wellbeing, emotional exhaustion, and burnout in clinicians
In spite of the technological advances made in medicine over the past century, research has shown density of human resources for healthcare delivery is an important determinant of health(Anand and Bärnighausen 2004). As we now believe that there is no health without mental health(Prince et al. 2007) for patients we treat, the emotional well-being of clinicians who deliver health care is of utmost importance. Burnout among healthcare professionals is increasing worldwide(Isaiah 2023) (Wright et al. 2022) and India is no exception(Koval et al. 2020). A recent systematic review (Hodkinson et al. 2022) mentioned that physician burnout impacts the quality of patient care that is delivered.
Clinician wellbeing
Prof Rajeev Sarin (MVI 8469) reflects on the stress of being an oncologist
Video by Savita Goswami
Video by Niladri Ghosal
Wellbeing of researchers
Video by Duncan Gilbert
Following a mixed methods design, we studied well-being and emotional exhaustion in oncology clinicians and this work has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Daruvala R, Ghosh M, Fratazzi F, Norzan SA, Laha A, Ahmed R, Panda S, Datta SS (2019) Emotional exhaustion in cancer clinicians: A mixed methods exploration. Indian J Med Paediatr Oncol 40:111-20. DOI: 10.4103/ijmpo.ijmpo_168_17
There were unique stresses during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and we published a commentary on how oncology hospitals responded during this time:
Datta SS, Mukherjee A, Ghose S, Bhattacharya S, and Gyawali B. (2020) Addressing the Mental Health Challenges of Cancer Care Workers in LMICs During the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic. JCO Global Oncology 2020 :6, 1490-1493. DOI: 10.1200/GO.20.00470
References:
University Press.Anand, Sudhir, and Till Bärnighausen. 2004. “Human Resources and Health Outcomes: Cross-Country Econometric Study.” Lancet 364 (9445): 1603–9.
Hodkinson, Alexander, Anli Zhou, Judith Johnson, Keith Geraghty, Ruth Riley, Andrew Zhou, Efharis Panagopoulou, et al. 2022. “Associations of Physician Burnout with Career Engagement and Quality of Patient Care: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) 378 (September):e070442.
Isaiah. 2023. “Physician Burnout Will Burn All of Us.” The Century Foundation. October 25, 2023. https://tcf.org/content/report/physician-burnout-will-burn-all-of-us/.
Koval, Kathryn W., Benjamin Lindquist, Christine Gennosa, Aditya Mahadevan, Kian Niknam, Sanket Patil, G. V. Ramana Rao, Matthew C. Strehlow, and Jennifer A. Newberry. 2020. “First Look at Emergency Medical Technician Wellness in India: Application of the Maslach Burnout Inventory in an Unstudied Population.” PloS One 15 (3): e0229954.