Abstract
BACKGROUND: It has been shown that the burnout rate for emergency medicine providers is among the highest seen in healthcare. While resilience and grit have been studied as protective against burnout, the ability to thrive may be a more useful target. Thriving has previously been defined as a combination of vitality—having energy available and feeling “alive”—and learning—acquiring and applying valuable knowledge. Thriving has been found to be dependent on several categories, one of which is unit contextual features (UCFs). UCFs are factors such as challenge or hindrance stressors, autonomy, and trust. OBJECTIVES: This study is being done to determine if Emergency Medicine residents are thriving, and what UCFs are contributing to their ability or inability to thrive during residency. Methods: We administered a mixed-methods survey developed from previously validated surveys regarding the UCFs and overall thriving to emergency medicine residents at one four-year emergency medicine residency training program in March of 2022. RESULTS: We received 38 responses (out of 58 residents) with 8-11 respondents per PGY level. Overall thriving score for all residents was 3.2/5. First-year residents had a score of 3.5/5 while 2nd-4th years each had a score of 3.1/5. Social support was the UCF that most contributed to thriving while hindrance stressors, challenge stressors, and autonomy negatively affected the residents’ thriving. CONCLUSIONS: We found ideal targets for interventions from the survey, with qualitative responses that can help guide those interventions to increase thriving. Other residencies could similarly use this survey to identify targets for intervention. Responses highlighted hindrance stressors present in the ED that would be ideal targets for intervention, while targeting social support may not have as much of an impact. The study was limited due to administration once during the year as time during the academic year may affect the level of thriving.
