Why a Wellness Program Made Burnout Worse for One Group of Residents
By FairShare Team · 3 min read
Published by FairShare: · 3 min read
Topic: Evidence-Based Wellness
Audience: resident, wellness-leader
Type: study-brief
Not every wellness intervention helps — and one of the more sobering findings in this space comes from a study published in the peer-reviewed Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, which measured what happened when a hospital-based residency program adopted a corporate wellness initiative with a documented track record of success in other healthcare provider populations, hoping to replicate those results for emergency medicine residents (a training population that shares much of anesthesiology residency's demanding, shift-based structure).
The program ran across a full academic year of required conference hours. Researchers measured burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory before and after the intervention, plus resident reactions to the program itself.
The results were not what organizers hoped
Post-intervention scores showed a small trend toward increased emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Overall satisfaction with the program was low — 1.5 out of 5. Worse, 43% of residents said the intervention subjectively made their overall burnout worse, and another 39% said it made no difference at all. Combined, that's more than 80% of residents reporting the program either hurt or did nothing.
This isn't a one-off finding — it lines up with a broader body of research (see our companion piece on the JAMA workplace wellness trial) showing that individual-focused wellness programming, imported wholesale from other industries without addressing the actual structural demands of the job, often falls flat for the people it's meant to help — and can occasionally backfire.
The lesson isn't "stop trying to help residents." It's that a program built for a different population, without addressing schedule, workload, or support structures directly, is not automatically going to translate — and measuring the actual result, rather than assuming good intentions equal good outcomes, matters.
Source
- Hart D, Paetow G, Zarzar R. Does Implementation of a Corporate Wellness Initiative Improve Burnout? Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. 2019;20(1):138–144.
Sources
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Does Implementation of a Corporate Wellness Initiative Improve Burnout?
(2019-01-15)
· Class: primary
· Tier: 2
Measured resident reactions to a corporate wellness initiative implemented over a full academic year; post-intervention MBI scores showed trend toward increased emotional exhaustion and depersonalization; overall satisfaction with program 1.5/5; 43% said intervention made burnout worse and 39% said no difference — >80% reporting neutral or negative effect.
Population: Emergency medicine residents (single program)
Limitations: Single program; emergency medicine residents, not anesthesiology; small sample; before-after design without control; self-report burnout measures.