Wellbeing Research

Research from India

Following a mixed methods design, we studied well-being and emotional exhaustion in oncology clinicians in India. We found that oncology can be an immensely satisfying career choice. However, there would be times of transition that can be stressful. Help with adequate human resources to cope with increasing numbers of patients, closing the gender gap of the organisation, having an open communication culture, identifying burnout early and having access to occupational mental health services could help in alleviating the emotional distress in clinicians. You can acess the full paper here.

Unique stresses occurred during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which helped us learn about psychological resilience and burnout. We reflected on our experience of staff mental health in our commentary published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (Global Oncology), which can be accessed here.

References:

  1. Anand, S and  Bärnighausen,T (2004) “Human Resources and Health Outcomes: Cross-Country Econometric Study.” Lancet 364 (9445): 1603–9.
  2. 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 6 (6): 1490–93.
  3. 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 (Access here)
  4. Hodkinson A, Zhou, A, Johnson J, Geraghty K, Riley R, Zhou A et al. Associations of physician burnout with career engagement and quality of patient care: systematic review and meta-analysis BMJ 2022; 378 :e070442 doi:10.1136/bmj-2022-070442 (Acess here)
  5. Isaiah. 2023. “Physician Burnout Will Burn All of Us.” The Century Foundation. October 25, 2023.
  6. Koval KW, Lindquist B, Gennosa C, Mahadevan A, Niknam K, et al. (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.
  7. Wright T, Mughal F, Babatunde OO, Dikomitis L, Mallen CD, Helliwell T.(2022)  Burnout among primary health-care professionals in low- and middle-income countries: systematic review and meta-analysis. Bull World Health Organ. 100(6):385-401A. (Acess here)