Using lifestyle medicine to treat patients can reduce practitioner burnout: a conceptual model derived from healthcare staff interviews

Abstract:

Background: Healthcare worker burnout is pervasive and negatively impacts practitioner and patient health. Lifestyle medicine (LM) is a burgeoning field that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions to treat or prevent chronic diseases including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Greater LM practice has previously been shown to predict less burnout among LM practitioners. There is a need to further investigate the relationship between practitioner burnout and using LM to treat patients. This study examines healthcare workers' views to develop a conceptual model to describe how employing LM to treat patients impacts practitioners.

Methods: This study is a qualitative, thematic analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews of forty-two staff members from five health systems in the United States that are implementing LM. Transcripts of in-depth interviews were analyzed for themes related to burnout.

Results: Staff interviewed included physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, psychologists, health coaches, and others. Staff described a positive reaction to, and increased job satisfaction following, LM implementation in their healthcare systems. Identified factors that might reduce healthcare worker burnout include meaningful patient improvement, increased patient empowerment, enhanced patient satisfaction, providers' heightened joy/job satisfaction, providers' belief that LM is how medicine should be practiced, and pride and gratitude due to their organization's support of LM. These factors are related to the three elements of burnout - exhaustion, detachment, reduced feelings of professional efficacy - in a conceptual model.

Conclusions: Implementing LM in healthcare systems can potentially reduce burnout in practitioners who believe that LM is an enjoyable and effective discipline. It may do this by creating work circumstances and patient outcomes leading providers to report greater professional joy, an improved sense of professional meaningfulness, and a strengthened conviction of being an effective healthcare worker.