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Better Together Physician Coaching: Mitigating Burnout in UME (BT for UME)

University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) logo

University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver)

Status

Completed

Conditions

Burnout, Professional

Treatments

Behavioral: Better Together Physician Coaching

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT05822375
23-0651

Details and patient eligibility

About

Better Together Physician Coaching ("Better Together", or "BT"), a 4-month, web-based positive psychology multimodal coaching program was built to decrease burnout in medical trainees. Here, the investigators seek to understand it's efficacy in University of Colorado School of Medicine (CU SOM) clinicians

Aim 1: Implement Better Together in undergraduate medical education settings for medical students Aim 2: Assess outcomes: primary: reduce burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Index (goal: 10% relative improvement), and secondary: self-compassion, imposter syndrome, flourishing, loneliness, and moral injury.

Aim 3: Advance the field of coaching for clinicians through innovation and dissemination of evidence-based approaches to medical student wellbeing.

Full description

Burnout refers to feelings of exhaustion, negativism, and reduced personal efficacy resulting from chronic workplace stress. In healthcare, burnout leads to increased medical errors, poorer patient care and negatively affects professional development and retention. Burnout is a growing problem that begins early in medical training. Professional coaching is a metacognition tool with a sustainable positive effect on physician well-being but typically relies on expensive consultants or time-consuming faculty development, often making it infeasible for medical training programs to offer. To overcome this barrier, the investigators created Better Together Physician Coaching (BT) a 4-month coaching program for at the University of Colorado (CU). BT includes regular online group-coaching, written coaching, and weekly self-study modules delivered by physician life coaches (Co-PIs). In 2021, the investigators studied BT in a group of female-identifying resident trainees at CU and found that the program significantly improved burnout, imposter syndrome, and self-compassion. This finding supports previous data that life coaching is effective for physicians and physicians in training. The investigators initially focused on women since burnout affects women to a greater degree than their male counterparts, and may have long-lasting consequences on their careers, contributing to a "leaky pipeline" effect. The pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 101 BT women participants demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in burnout, self-compassion, and imposter syndrome in the intervention group.

The investigators now seek to understand if the coaching program is also effective in medical students of all gender identities.

The hypothesis is that Better Together Physician Coaching ("Better Together", or "BT"), a 4-month, web-based positive psychology multimodal coaching program will result in decreased burnout in medical students.

Aim 1: Implement Better Together in the undergraduate medical student population

Aim 2: Assess outcomes: primary: reduce burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Index (goal: 10% relative improvement), and secondary: self-compassion, imposter syndrome, flourishing, loneliness, and moral injury.

Aim 3: Advance the field of coaching for clinicians through innovation and dissemination of evidence-based approaches to medical student wellbeing.

Enrollment

490 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 65 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • current medical students at one of the 5 US undergraduate medical education sites

Exclusion criteria

  • non-medical students

Trial design

Primary purpose

Prevention

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Sequential Assignment

Masking

Single Blind

490 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention
Experimental group
Description:
Will be offered the BT coaching intervention over 4-months (Sept 1st 2023- Dec 31st 2023).
Treatment:
Behavioral: Better Together Physician Coaching
Waitlist control
No Intervention group
Description:
Will be offered the coaching intervention following 4-month waitlist control (Feb 1st 2024 - May 31st 2024).

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Central trial contact

tyra fainstad, MD

Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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