From Burnout to Wholehearted Engagement: A Qualitative Exploration of Psychiatry Residents' Experience of Stress

Gaining Respect and Mitigating Risk: A Qualitative Exploration of How New Attendings Navigate Interpersonal Relationships with Recent Resident Peers

Background

Physicians moving through training experience changes in personal and professional relationships, which can increase stress, uncertainty, and burnout. Social connection can be an important resource but can introduce complexity and conflict. This study aimed to explore how early-career attendings navigate and manage changing organizational and friendship roles with recent resident peers (near-peers) through this critical transition.

Methods

We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with early-career attendings working with near-peers from the same institution where they trained. Twenty three of 27 (85%) eligible attendings from two United States health systems participated in semi-structured interviews between April and June 2023.

Results

Familiarity from working at the same institution where new attendings completed training made it more difficult to command authority. Early-career attendings at times struggled with insecurities about their ability to fulfill their new role and challenges from others in recognizing their new attending identity. These tensions could heighten emotions in the clinical setting and spill over into relationships with residents outside the workplace, impacting social lives and well-being. Early-career attendings engaged in strategies to manage the social realm of their transition with near-peers, including prioritizing their organizational role in the clinical setting and mitigating risks to their professional reputation by creating stronger boundaries between their personal and professional lives.

Conclusions

This study provides new insight into how attendings navigate changing personal and professional relationships with recent resident peers and offers strategies on how to manage the social realm of this liminal transition.

Impact of mental health boarding on clinicians at a children's hospital: A qualitative analysis

BACKGROUND

The child and adolescent mental health boarding crisis (i.e., prolonged stays in acute care hospitals for patients awaiting mental health treatment) continues to challenge acute care hospital staff and resources. We sought to understand clinician's experiences while caring for patients experiencing mental health boarding.

METHODS

We conducted semistructured qualitative interviews with clinicians who care for patients experiencing mental health boarding in an acute care freestanding children's hospital with no inpatient psychiatric unit. We used an inductive approach to determine interview themes and major findings.

RESULTS

The study included 48 clinician participants from diverse specialties, including 13 social workers, 11 nurses, five psychiatric technicians, six pediatric residents, four attending pediatric hospitalists, four attending psychiatrists, one psychologist, and four other mental health specialists. We identified emergent themes in five domains: (1) frustrations with the mental healthcare system, (2) lack of training in mental healthcare skills, (3) feelings of helplessness, (4) ineffectiveness of medical model of care during mental health boarding, and (5) resilience and support factors.

CONCLUSIONS

Caring for patients with mental health boarding has negative effects on clinicians, and health system efforts to prevent boarding could improve workforce retention and reduce burnout.