Association between Sick Leave Prescribing Practices and Physician Burnout and Empathy

Abstract

ObjectivesTo investigate the association between sick leave prescription and physician burnout and empathy in a primary care health district in Lleida, Spain.MethodsThis descriptive study included 108 primary care doctors from 22 primary care centers in Lleida in 2014 (183,600 patients). Burnout was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory and empathy with the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. The reliability of the instruments was measured by calculating Cronbach’s alpha and normal distribution was analyzed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Lilliefors and χ2 tests. Burnout and empathy scores were analyzed by age, sex, and place of work (urban vs rural). Sick leave data were obtained from the Catalan Health Institute.ResultsHigh empathy was significantly associated with low burnout. Neither empathy nor burnout were significantly associated with sick leave prescription.ConclusionSick leave prescription by physicians is not associated with physicians' empathy or burnout and may mostly depend on prescribing guidelines.

Caring for Critically Ill Patients: Clinicians’ Empathy Promotes Job Satisfaction and Does Not Predict Moral Distress

“…Specifically, Gleichgerrcht and Decety (2013) found that physicians who had difficulty in identifying emotions and regulating their negative arousal developed emotional exhaustion, detachment, and a low sense of accomplishment. Empathy, as the middle way between emotional over-and under involvement, seems protect clinicians from burnout and secondary traumatic stress (Torres et al, 2015;Wagaman et al, 2015). Consistently with the literature, our findings provide evidence that empathy is not a risk factor for developing moral distress.…”

“…Other studies proved that empathy may be beneficial also for clinicians as it may promote self-efficacy and decrease burnout (Halpern, 2003;Krasner et al, 2009;Gleichgerrcht and Decety, 2013). Specifically, empathy was found to be inversely related to burnout among general practitioners (Torres et al, 2015) and medical students (Paro et al, 2014;von Harscher et al, 2017), and was found to decrease burnout and secondary traumatic stress among social workers (Wagaman et al, 2015).…”

Does Formulation of Service Users’ Difficulties Improve Empathy in Forensic Mental Health Services?

“…In some of the literature, empathy has been negatively correlated to level of perceived burnout in health care staff (Lamothe, Boujut, Zenasni, & Sultan, 2014;Lee, Song, Cho, Lee, & Daly, 2003;Torres, Areste, Mora, & Soler-Gonzalez, 2015;Walocha, Tomaszewski, Wilczek-Rużyczka1, & Walocha, 2013). Zenasni, Boujut, Woerner, and Sultan (2012) have proposed (given the evidence for a negative association between burnout and empathy), that interventions to increase clinicians' level of empathy with service users may serve to prevent or protect against burnout.…”

Is Balint training associated with the reduced burnout among primary health care doctors?

“…In a study conducted in the Netherlands [38], the percentage of doctors with a high level of emotional exhaustion was smaller compared to our Non-Balint sample (7%:45%), also depersonalization (11%:20%) and for reduced personal accomplishment was almost the same (22%:21.4%) [38]. In a research conducted in Spain, the high values of all three dimensions of burnout were observed with a smaller number of primary care doctors compared to our Non-Balint participants (20.9% for emotional exhaustion, 16.3% for depersonalization and 4.7% for low sense of personal accomplishment) [23]. …”