Impacts of Research Staff Burnout for a National Large Scale Pragmatic Clinical Trial

Abstract

Introduction: Burnout can have a negative impact on job satisfaction and productivity. Antecedents to burnout include workload, control, values, fairness, reward, community and job-person incongruency. Purpose: To better understand the impact of burnout in research staff, these seven antecedents to burnout were analyzed retrospectively within the call centers for the Diuretic Comparison Project. Methods: Two call centers were analyzed with respect to these antecedents to burnout. Consent rates and employee turnover of the two call centers were compared as a means of comparing productivity and job satisfaction, respectively. Results: An odds ratio of 0.13 (95% CI=[0.0164, 1.0853]) indicates that an employee at the Minneapolis call center had lower odds of leaving than an employee at the Canandaigua call center. The call center in Canandaigua had a consent rate of 2.7% (Figure 2). The consent rate for the same months of the following year in Minneapolis came out to 14.6%. Conclusion: A higher consent rate and lower turnover rate of the call center in Minneapolis could be a result of lower levels of burnout among callers. The confidence interval of the odds ratio calculated for turnover indicates that the result is not statistically significant. Due to the retrospective nature of the analysis, extraneous variables were not controlled for analyzing this data. The protocol of the Minneapolis call center appears to take into consideration the antecedents to burnout more than that of the Canandaigua call center. Further studies on burnout prevention methods for clinical research are needed. Research staff could benefit from strategies to help reduce burnout. Organizations should provide proper protocols and training concerning stress and burnout to improve the well-being of employees and, in turn, their productivity.