Better Together Physician Coaching to Mitigate Burnout in Male-Identifying Trainees

NCT ID: NCT05550753

Last Updated: 2023-09-28

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 41 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2023-01-02
• Study Completion Date: 2023-09-01

Brief Summary

Better Together Physician Coaching ("Better Together", or "BT"), a 4-month, web-based positive psychology multimodal coaching program was built to decrease burnout in medical trainees. Here, the investigators seek to understand it's efficacy in male-identifying trainees at the University of Colorado

• Aim 1: Implement Better Together in for male-identifying trainees in Graduate Medical Education at the University of Colorado.
• Aim 2: Assess outcomes: primary: reduce burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Index (goal: 10% relative improvement), and secondary: self-compassion, imposter syndrome, flourishing and moral injury.
• Aim 3: Advance the field of coaching in GME through innovation and dissemination of evidence-based approaches to GME trainee wellbeing.

Detailed Description

Burnout refers to feelings of exhaustion, negativism, and reduced personal efficacy resulting from chronic workplace stress. In healthcare, burnout leads to increased medical errors, poorer patient care and negatively affects professional development and retention. Burnout is a growing problem that begins early in medical training. Professional coaching is a metacognition tool with a sustainable positive effect on physician well-being but typically relies on expensive consultants or time-consuming faculty development, often making it infeasible for medical training programs to offer. To overcome this barrier, the investigators created Better Together Physician Coaching (BT) a 4-month coaching program for at the University of Colorado (CU). BT includes regular online group-coaching, written coaching, and weekly self-study modules delivered by physician life coaches (Co-PIs). In 2021, the investigators studied BT in a group of female-identifying resident trainees at CU and found that the program significantly improved burnout, imposter syndrome, and self-compassion.6 This finding supports previous data that life coaching is effective for physicians and physicians in training. The investigators initially focused on women since burnout affects women to a greater degree than their male counterparts, and may have long-lasting consequences on their careers, contributing to a "leaky pipeline" effect. The pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 101 BT women participants demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in burnout, self-compassion, and imposter syndrome in the intervention group.

The investigators now seek to understand if the coaching program is also effective in male-identifying medical trainees. There is some literature suggesting that women are more likely to engage in wellness interventions, and may be more likely to report symptoms of burnout on surveys than men despite actual experiences. There is data to suggest that men and women are affected to different degrees by wellness interventions and there is also data that shows different effects (both positive and negative) of mixing genders. The investigators eventually plan to offer coaching to a co-ed group however realize that if efficacy is different in this group, it will be unknown if the difference is due to men being affected to a different degree than women, or if the difference is due to mixing the genders. Before testing the program in a co-ed group, the investigators first need to see if the coaching is effective in men. This project will test Better Together amongst male-identifying participants, and the program will be evaluated by the CU research team to see if the program has the same impacts.

The hypothesis is that Better Together Physician Coaching ("Better Together", or "BT"), a 4-month, web-based positive psychology multimodal coaching program will result in decreased burnout in male-identifying residents in medical training at CU.

• Aim 1: Implement Better Together in for male-identifying trainees in Graduate Medical Education at the University of Colorado.
• Aim 2: Assess outcomes: primary: reduce burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Index (goal: 10% relative improvement), and secondary: self-compassion, imposter syndrome, flourishing and moral injury.
• Aim 3: Advance the field of coaching in GME through innovation and dissemination of evidence-based approaches to GME trainee wellbeing.

Conditions

Burnout, Professional; Self Compassion; Flourishing; Imposter Syndrome; Moral Injury

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: SEQUENTIAL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Intervention

Will be offered the BT coaching intervention during of 4-months (February 1st 2023- May 31st 2023).

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Better Together Physician Coaching Program

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

thought-based coaching. This type of coaching focuses on thoughts and beliefs. It combines a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model with mindfulness-based awareness and integrates theories of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), nonattachment, and radical questioning from Socratic and Greek philosophies.4 BT delivers a robust coaching experience via a 4-month web-based, group-coaching model. This novel program allows residents to participate as actively as they are inclined and able, offering flexibility via multiple modalities of coaching: twice weekly group coaching calls, unlimited anonymous written coaching, and weekly self-study modules that are housed on a secure members-only website.

Control

Will NOT be offered the BT coaching intervention during of 4-months (February 1st 2023- May 31st 2023). Will be offered the coaching intervention after the study completion (from September 1st 2023 - December 31st 2023).

Group Type: PLACEBO_COMPARATOR

No intervention - placebo control

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

No intervention - placebo control

Interventions

Better Together Physician Coaching Program

thought-based coaching. This type of coaching focuses on thoughts and beliefs. It combines a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model with mindfulness-based awareness and integrates theories of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), nonattachment, and radical questioning from Socratic and Greek philosophies.4 BT delivers a robust coaching experience via a 4-month web-based, group-coaching model. This novel program allows residents to participate as actively as they are inclined and able, offering flexibility via multiple modalities of coaching: twice weekly group coaching calls, unlimited anonymous written coaching, and weekly self-study modules that are housed on a secure members-only website.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

No intervention - placebo control

No intervention - placebo control

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Other Intervention Names

no intervention, residency as usual

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• trainee (resident or fellow) in graduate medical education at the University of Colorado, who identify as male (cis, transman, gender-queer, non-binary are welcome).

Exclusion Criteria

• non-trainee, non male-identifying

• Eligible Sex: MALE
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

University of Colorado, Denver

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Locations

University of Colorado School of Medicine

Aurora, Colorado, United States

Countries

United States

References

Villwock JA, Sobin LB, Koester LA, Harris TM. Impostor syndrome and burnout among American medical students: a pilot study. Int J Med Educ. 2016 Oct 31;7:364-369. doi: 10.5116/ijme.5801.eac4.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 27802178 (View on PubMed)

Mantri S, Lawson JM, Wang Z, Koenig HG. Identifying Moral Injury in Healthcare Professionals: The Moral Injury Symptom Scale-HP. J Relig Health. 2020 Oct;59(5):2323-2340. doi: 10.1007/s10943-020-01065-w.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 32681398 (View on PubMed)

Kelly-Hedrick M, Rodriguez MM, Ruble AE, Wright SM, Chisolm MS. Measuring Flourishing Among Internal Medicine and Psychiatry Residents. J Grad Med Educ. 2020 Jun;12(3):312-319. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-19-00793.1.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 32595851 (View on PubMed)

Fainstad T, Mann A, Suresh K, Shah P, Dieujuste N, Thurmon K, Jones CD. Effect of a Novel Online Group-Coaching Program to Reduce Burnout in Female Resident Physicians: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2022 May 2;5(5):e2210752. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.10752.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 35522281 (View on PubMed)

Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). Maslach Burnout Inventory: Third edition. In C. P. Zalaquett & R. J. Wood (Eds.), Evaluating stress: A book of resources (pp. 191-218). Scarecrow Education.

Reference Type: RESULT

Neff KD. Self-Compassion Scale. PsycTESTS Dataset. 2012. doi:10.1037/t10178-000

Reference Type: RESULT

Other Identifiers

22-1718

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id