Impact of a Wellness Leadership Intervention on the Empathy, Burnout, and Resting Heart Rate of Medical Faculty
Debra Gilin, Gregory G. Anderson, Ehsan Etezad, Dayna Lee‐Baggley, Angela Cooper, R.J. Preston
Abstract
ObjectiveTo evaluate the efficacy of a wellness leadership intervention for improving the empathy, burnout, and physiological stress of medical faculty leaders.Participants and MethodsParticipants were 49 medical faculty leaders (80% physicians, 20% basic scientists; 67% female). The 6-week course was evaluated with a 15-week longitudinal waitlist-control quasi-experiment from September 1, 2021, through December 20, 2021 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). We analyzed 3 pretest-posttest-posttest and 6 weekly survey measurements of affective empathy and burnout, and mean=85 (SD=31) aggregated daily resting heart rates per participant, using 2-level hierarchical linear modeling.ResultsThe course found a preventive effect for leaders’ burnout escalation. As the control group awaited the course, their empathy decreased (coefficientTime=−1.27; P=.02) and their resting heart rates increased an average of 1.4 beats/min (coefficientTime=0.18; P<.001), reflecting the toll of the pandemic. Intervention group leaders reported no empathy decrements (coefficientTime=.33; P=.59) or escalated resting heart rate (coefficientTime=−0.05; P=.27) during the same period. Dose-response analysis revealed that both groups reduced their self-rated burnout over the 6 weeks of the course (coefficientTime=−0.28; P=.007), and those who attended more of the course showed less heart rate increase (coefficientTime∗Dosage=−0.05; P<.001). In addition, 12.73% of the within-person fluctuation in empathy was associated with burnout and resting heart rate.ConclusionA wellness leadership intervention helped prevent burnout escalation and empathy decrement in medical faculty leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing potential to improve the supportiveness and psychological safety of the medical training environment.