Preventive care for burnout: General practitioner pilot program in Barcelona

Abstract

Background: Despite the prevalence of " pro-fesssional exhaustion syndrome " or " burnout " , very few intervention programs for healthcare professionals have been proposed, and even fewer have been evaluated. The Catalan Health Institute requested an intervention that would be preventive, integrated, and would differentiate between those affected by burnout and those with established psychopathologic disorders requiring specific treatment. Aims: To describe the experience and initial reflections from the first cohort of primary care physicians in the Barcelona public health system to participate in a program designed to prevent burnout. Meth-ods: Descriptive analysis of the characteristics of this secondary prevention program: design, cost estimates, recruitment and screening, and activities (training, organization, and group tech-niques). Particular emphasis on the process of identifying potentially affected professionals, how they were offered the opportunity to par-ticipate, and the coordinated and confidential nature of the program. Results: Of a target population of 969 family doctors and pediatri-cians in public primary care services in Barce-lona, 6 (0.61%) applied for full program partici-pation. All of them, along with 2 non-medical professionals in primary care services who join-ed the program, met the clinical and psycho-metric criteria (Shirom-Melamed Burnout Meas-ure, General Health Questionnaire, and the 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire) of the de-sired participant profile. Conclusions: The level of participation could suggest defects in pro-gram design or, alternatively, problems in the concept of burnout. This construct may be more useful for detecting stress attributed to occupa-tional contexts than for facilitating participation in activities related to its prevention or treatment.