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Better Together Physician Coaching to Mitigate Burnout Amongst Clinicians

University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) logo

University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver)

Status

Completed

Conditions

Moral Injury
Burnout, Professional
Loneliness
Self Compassion
Flourishing
Imposter Syndrome

Treatments

Behavioral: Better Together Physician Coaching Program
Behavioral: No intervention - waitlist control

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT05635448
22-2158

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 University of Colorado School of Medicine clinicians 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 clinician 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 clinicians 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 University of Colorado School of Medicine (CU SOM) clinicians.

Aim 1: Implement Better Together in CU SOM clinicians 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 clinician wellbeing.

Enrollment

160 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 99 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • University of Colorado School of Medicine (CU SOM) clinicians AND
  • Faculty

Exclusion criteria

  • Non-CU SOM clinicians, non-faculty

Trial design

Primary purpose

Treatment

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Sequential Assignment

Masking

Single Blind

160 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

Intervention
Experimental group
Description:
Will be offered the BT coaching intervention over 4-months (February 1st 2023- May 31st 2023).
Treatment:
Behavioral: Better Together Physician Coaching Program
Waitlist control
Placebo Comparator group
Description:
Will be offered the coaching intervention following 4-month waitlist control (September 1st 2023 - December 31st 2023).
Treatment:
Behavioral: No intervention - waitlist control

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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