The Impact of Individual and Team-Level Variables on Burnout in Healthcare Providers

Burnout among medical providers is a growing issue with effects that start at the provider level and span outward to affect the entire hospital system. The consensus of the literature is that there are multiple categories of factors which lead to the development of burnout including personal characteristics, social characteristics, and job/work characteristics. Because of the highly collaborative and interpersonal nature of healthcare work, the interactions among team members have the potential to significantly influence provider burnout and recent studies are beginning to examine this interaction more carefully. However, there is little research that examines the relationship between multiple personal and team characteristics and the burnout phenomenon in healthcare providers. The present study aimed to investigate the role of team-level constructs such as team outcome effectiveness and team psychological safety, and individual-level constructs such as emotional intelligence and perceived autonomy in relation to burnout among clinicians. It was hypothesized that higher levels of perceived autonomy, team outcome effectiveness, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence would result in lower levels of burnout in providers. Medical providers (n = 245) at two large medical centers were asked to complete an 86-item online survey and the data was used to conduct a full structural equation model (SEM) to determine the relationships between the constructs. Results of this study indicate that emotional intelligence, psychological safety, and team outcome effectiveness positively predicted one or more aspects of the burnout phenomenon, while perceived autonomy did not. In addition, the present study found that emotional intelligence significantly and positively predicted psychological safety, perceived autonomy, and team outcome effectiveness. The resultant findings have provided valuable insight into the impact of team and personal constructs on perceived burnout among clinicians, so that these constructs may be utilized in the future as a diagnostic for the health and performance of a high-functioning care team. Future studies on burnout should examine its statistical relationship with other relevant constructs, especially those which represent a characteristic of the team