Longitudinal Associations between Depression, Daytime Sleepiness, and Caregiver Strain in Parkinson's Disease.

Physician burnout has been reported to impact between 30%–60% of the workforce in recent years. When physicians experience burnout, they are more susceptible to job dissatisfaction and poor patient outcomes. Burnout may be driven by poor workplace conditions, a lack of appreciation, and high work/call burden. Mistreatment (i.e., bullying, identity-based discrimination, and sexual harassment) in the workplace may also contribute to burnout, poor psychological safety, thoughts of attrition and suicide for physicians. Presently, the groups most vulnerable to higher exposure rates of mistreatment are trainees, surgeons, and female physicians. Despite recent efforts to address poor well-being among trainees, there has been less work in the space of the well-being and workplace environment of surgical faculty. This may be of particular importance in light of ongoing changes to the training environment, which qualitative work has indicated may shift additional workplace burdens onto faculty. Addressing modifiable workplace factors contributing to poor surgeon well-being also has implications for the surgical workforce overall. Given the projected physician shortage of more than 30,000 within the next 10 years, of which up to 74% are predicted to be surgeons, maximizing retention of trained surgeons is of great importance. Augmenting well-being and curtailing mistreatment in the workplace should decrease attrition and may improve patient outcomes. Despite the urgent need to improve the well-being of practicing surgeons, the prevalence of poor well-being amongst surgical faculty and the workplace factors associated with it is poorly understood. To address this, a new anonymous, national survey was distributed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to general surgery faculty within the U.S. to assess overall well-being and the workplace environment. The survey could not be used by the ACGME for program accreditation or assessment. Our objectives were to (1) assess the prevalence of poor faculty well-being (e.g., burnout, thoughts of attrition, and suicidality), (2) examine the prevalence and sources of faculty mistreatment (e.g., bullying, identity-based discrimination, and sexual harassment), and (3) investigate faculty and institutional characteristics associated with surgeon well-being.