(Montreal) Even as the intensity of the COVID-19 crisis has abated, burnout among emergency physicians across the country continues to rise.
Posted at 11:17 am.
Katrine Desautels The Canadian Press
According to a Canadian study that first appeared in the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine, problems in the health system are the cause.
The results of the survey, conducted in fall 2022, made it possible to compare the evolution of the mental health of 309 doctors from one end of Canada to the other who participated in a 2020 survey that also measured professional burnout among emergency physicians.
Comparing the results, we find that 59% of respondents feel high levels of emotional exhaustion, an increase of 18 points compared to 2020 results.
“Emotional exhaustion is associated with feeling emotionally overwhelmed and exhausted by one's work and with the perception of a lack of energy and motivation to complete it,” said a press release from Laval University, whose professor at of the Faculty of Medicine Patrick Archambault Co. is the author of the study.
“It doesn't surprise me that the need is increasing when we see locally the extent to which resources are less available than before,” explained Mr. Archambault, who is also an emergency intensive care physician at the Hotel God of Lévis.
The pandemic has made it possible to concentrate services at various critical points in the health system, which has temporarily reduced emergency room traffic, he explained.
The return to normality has caused pre-pandemic problems to recur. Worse, several health professionals have left their profession by retiring or changing careers, Mr. Archambault points out. He fears that the health system will collapse if governments do not quickly find a solution.
“There will continue to be professionals who do their best every day in emergencies […] But the crisis continues. The problem is that if we don't support teams, this professional burnout could continue to worsen, leading to more departures and fewer emergency resources.
“We must recognize the work of emergency physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and pharmacists. “All the actors currently working in the health system are working hard to help the population,” emphasized Mr. Archambault. He stressed that professionals had the desire to continue supporting the system, but that it was urgent to find solutions.
The dysfunctional system involved
The study results also indicate that 64% of respondents feel high levels of depersonalization. This is an increase of 11 points compared to the 2020 survey.
Depersonalization is the fact that we are faced with a situation that we want to solve, but we could do better to get there.
Mr. Archambault gave the example that doctors often send seniors home sooner than they would like because emergencies are not a conducive environment for them, especially when they are on a stretcher. “Risk management becomes very large and the stress this creates for emergency physicians contributes to this depersonalization and professional burnout,” he comments.
According to Mr. Archambault, who is also a researcher at the VITAM – Sustainable Health Research Center, the aging of the population, the greater complexity of emergency problems and the time required to solve them with fewer resources are factors contributing to physician burnout and at the CISSS de Chaudière research center -Appalaches.
He said study participants' comments highlighted possible explanations for the deterioration in their mental health. The most common comment was that the healthcare system had become dysfunctional.
Quebec's demographics are leading to an increase in the number of seniors turning to emergencies for lack of other services. In addition, the availability of private senior residences (RPA) is decreasing.
“It's the perfect storm for the world to flood into emergency rooms and take up beds because seniors in communities need more resources but they're simply no longer available,” laments Mr. Archambault.
Emergency physician burnout may be even more severe than the survey shows because physicians did not respond to the survey. “The loss to follow-up may be among people who have recovered very well and are simply not interested in participating in the follow-up survey, but the likelihood that it will be doctors who are even more exhausted is quite high.” »
Mr Archambault is aware that governments are working with hospitals and professional bodies to find solutions, but given staff shortages this needs to be accelerated.
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