Should all ICU clinicians regularly be tested for burnout? Yes

Excerpt

Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions are unplanned emergencies where ICU professionals are required to rapidly attend to complicated situations with uncertain outcomes. The interprofessional team is immersed in a complex milieu of heightened stress and intense emotion as they engage in a medical crisis with the patient and family. This is further compounded by a work environment that has become increasingly technical with its demand of extended skills in advanced life-sustaining therapies. A growing body of evidence suggests that burnout among ICU nurses [1] and ICU physicians [2] is the direct consequence of this demanding and inexorably high-stress work environment. Severe burnout-related symptoms are prevalent and have been reported in one-third of ICU nursing staff and one-half of ICU intensivists [1‐3]. Burnout in healthcare workers may profoundly affect their well-being and the quality of professional care they provide and, therefore, may represent an important, and potentially modifiable, patient safety concern. Indeed, burnout has been identified as a key determinant of medical error in physicians [4] and has become a priority issue in our specialty and focus of a recent joint statement of the Critical Care Societies Collaborative [3]. …