Unpacking burnout intervention effects : why does it work and who benefits?

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of empathy styles and the mediating role of self-care activities, recovery experience, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) process behaviors in effectiveness of a successful burnout intervention trial, namely, Burnout Recovery. The current study conducted a secondary data analysis on a pooled population from the original Burnout Recovery trial and a replication study. Participants were 93 home care nursing leaders across Nova Scotia and Ontario provinces, from which 69 people were assigned to intervention group and 24 people were assigned to control group (partially at random). Data were collected via Maslach Burnout Inventory, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II, Recovery Experience, and ACT process questionnaire. Results showed intervention effectively combated increasing burnout over time. However, empathy styles did not show significant effects on intervention effectiveness. As to the underlying process, behavioral awareness as one of the ACT process subconstructs was the only mediator that showed significant sequential explanation of the Burnout Recovery effect such that in time of increased burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion), people in intervention group could combat reaching higher burnout over time by engaging in behavioral awareness. These results contribute to understanding the burnout alleviation process in the Burnout Recovery and lead to the program improvement in terms of reinforcing components, activities, and measurements for future implementations, which will make it more promising in improving healthcare leaders’ well-being and the whole workplace's healthy engagement with the work, ultimately, benefit healthcare systems as well as patients’ quality of care.