SAT-263 Exploring Physician Wellness and Satisfaction at Community-Based Hospital

Abstract

Physician wellness plays an important role in healthcare. Providers are constantly exposed to long work hours and stressful events which may lead to fatigue and burn out. Burnout has been linked to decrease in patient satisfaction and quality of care. It has also been associated with higher physician/staff turnover, physician substance abuse, higher medical error rates and malpractice risk. In the last few years, there has been tremendous push by ACGME to address physician/resident burn out. In 2015, the official data of ACGME physician survey illustrated burn out in 46% of in training physicians. The aim of our study is to assess parameters that include physician satisfaction with their work hours, dietary habits and routine physical activity. The survey was distributed to all hospital departments at our community based hospital. Total 104 residents and attendings participated in the study. 50% of the participants reported BMI higher than normal range. 31.4% reported eating 4 servings of vegetable 1-2 times a week, only 6.9% reported eating vegetables 7 days a week. 70% of participants reported not accounting for caloric content during meal preparation, 33% reported having no basic knowledge of calorie counting. However, majority of respondents reported 5 on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the most comfortable in regards to counseling patients on dietary recommendations. Although 34.5% of participants reported to be "extremely comfortable" and 32.4% "somewhat comfortable" with counseling patients on exercise, only 6.9 % of participants reported performing moderate intensity exercising at least 5 times a week. However, 49% of participants reported not participating in strength training sessions. The majority of respondents (73.5%) cited lack of time as the main barrier to achieving the recommended physical activity guidelines. Our survey results suggest that physician have limited access to meeting basic nutrition requirement during work hours. Although majority of physicians report being comfortable in counseling patient, they themselves don’t participate in routine physical activity. Long work shifts and poor nutritional quality of cafeteria food were important factors in our survey. Physical activity counseling has been found to reflect a physician’s own personal exercise habits, which affects patient care. As suggested in other studies, our participants also cited lack of time, and limited access to nutrition during the work day. With these results, we aim to raise awareness of the shortcomings of physician wellness and look for ways for improve our overall well being in an effort to provide better patient care.