Impact of a Wellness Leadership Intervention on the Empathy, Burnout, and Resting Heart Rate of Medical Faculty

Objective

To evaluate the efficacy of a wellness leadership intervention for improving the empathy, burnout, and physiological stress of medical faculty leaders.

Participants and Methods

Participants were 49 medical faculty leaders (80% physicians, 20% basic scientists; 67% female). The 6-week course was evaluated with a 15-week longitudinal waitlist-control quasi-experiment from September 1, 2021, through December 20, 2021 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). We analyzed 3 pretest-posttest-posttest and 6 weekly survey measurements of affective empathy and burnout, and mean=85 (SD=31) aggregated daily resting heart rates per participant, using 2-level hierarchical linear modeling.

Results

The course found a preventive effect for leaders’ burnout escalation. As the control group awaited the course, their empathy decreased (coefficient_Time=−1.27; P=.02) and their resting heart rates increased an average of 1.4 beats/min (coefficient_Time=0.18; P<.001), reflecting the toll of the pandemic. Intervention group leaders reported no empathy decrements (coefficient_Time=.33; P=.59) or escalated resting heart rate (coefficient_Time=−0.05; P=.27) during the same period. Dose-response analysis revealed that both groups reduced their self-rated burnout over the 6 weeks of the course (coefficient_Time=−0.28; P=.007), and those who attended more of the course showed less heart rate increase (coefficient_{Time∗Dosage}=−0.05; P<.001). In addition, 12.73% of the within-person fluctuation in empathy was associated with burnout and resting heart rate.

Conclusion

A wellness leadership intervention helped prevent burnout escalation and empathy decrement in medical faculty leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing potential to improve the supportiveness and psychological safety of the medical training environment.