Study: Reading for pleasure combats physician burnout
Residency Program Insider, January 24, 2019
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Residency Program Insider!
Recent studies confirm that non-medical reading can combat burnout by increasing empathy and decreasing depersonalization in physicians. In an attempt to determine the impact of reading on burnout, Daniel Marchalik, MD, AMA member, medical director of physician wellbeing at MedStar Health, worked with his colleagues to send a survey to approximately 2,500 doctors. The survey asks questions focused on burnout, demographics, reading habits, and undergraduate curriculum offerings.
The results of the survey showed that those physicians who read fiction performed better in tasks related to theory of mind—a person’s ability to comprehend that others have beliefs, emotions, etc. that are different from their own. Theory of mind tasks are frequently used as to gauge a person’s level of empathy.
Another survey revealed that the number of respondents experiencing emotional exhaustion and depersonalization fell by 19% and 44% respectively among those who read at least one book a month in comparison to those who did not read at all. Results from an unpublished study by Marchalik confirms this relationship, as chances for burnout decreased by 59% among residents who read for pleasure.
Source: American Medical Association
Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Residency Program Insider!
Related Products
-
Residency Program Alert
Residency program managers in all specialties are challenged to effectively manage their programs as accrediting agencies...
-
Residency Program Insider
Residency Program Connection is devoted to bringing residency directors and coordinators expert advice, best practice...
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Don't forget the three checks in medication administration
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- Practice the six rights of medication administration
- Understanding nursing roles in quality improvement
- Prevent dehydration with nursing interventions
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- Understand and overcome language, cultural barriers
- Q&A: Primary, principal, and secondary diagnoses
- Understand which parts of the medical record coders can use
- Complications from immobility by body system
- E-mailed
-
- Patient handoffs: The gap where mistakes are made
- OB services: Coding inside and outside of the package
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- Train your environmental services staff on HIPAA: Risks to consider and tactics to try
- Practice defensive charting
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- Learn how to read an OP report
- Duke Health to begin reusing N95 masks
- Searched
