Influence of Covid-19 on Burnout among Critical Care Advanced Practice Providers

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Burnout results from physical and mental exhaustion and affects the intentionality to leave the profession. Unfortunately, burnout scenarios have been quite common among Critical Care Advance Practice Providers (APPs). The calls to action to sustain the critical care workforce were in full force before COVID-19 attacked the world and rapidly turned into a pandemic. Already overburdened and depleted critical care workforce was further exacerbated by overwhelming work demands. Our research was aimed at understanding the influence of COVID-19 on the critical care APPs. METHOD(S) We utilized a cross-sectional REDCap survey to understand the self-perceived extent to which the burnout among critical APPs had changed. A single link to survey was emailed to 2775 SCCM physician assistant and nursing section members. There were 578 responses (response rate 20.8%). After excluding 60 non-APPs responses, our sample size was 518. Survey questions asked about the symptoms of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, perception of reduced personal accomplishments and intention to leave. RESULT(S) We found an increase in burnout and related dimensions. Emotional exhaustion increased from 28.8%- 69.9%, depersonalization increased from 17.2%-37.6%%, and perception of reduced personal accomplishments increased from 18.1%-38% among our study population. We also asked about the intentions to leave critical care and a total of 513 participants engaged with this question. Twenty-two percent (n=114) of our sample expressed an intention to leave critical care. We also asked about the intention to leave the profession altogether and only 21.8% (n=113) participants responded. A total of 43.3% (n=49) respondents reported the intention to leave the profession altogether within the following 2-5 years. Of those who responded, 22.1% (n=25) intended to leave within 1 year and 25.7% (n=29) intended to leave between 5-10 years while 8.9% (n=10) stated that they intended to stay beyond 10 years. CONCLUSION(S) COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the burnout and its dimensions among critical care APPs. It is crucial to attend to the trends in burnout and intention to leave and mitigation strategies must be employed to sustain the critical care workforce which is key to planning the future of critical care in the US and globally.