Correlation of Coping, Mentorship, and Life Events with Burnout in Internal Medicine Residents

Physician burnout is a widespread problem. We examined how coping, mentorship, and life events correlated with burnout in Internal Medicine Residents. We performed a cross-sectional study of survey data collected over multiple time points and used Spearman correlation of coping, mentorship, and life events to emotional exhaustion (EE) and cynicism (CYN). Burnout was assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory–General Survey (MBI-GS), coping skills were measured using the Brief COPE, mentorship with an institutional mentoring survey, and life events with a shortened Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). Two thousand one surveys were distributed to 616 residents from 2010 to 2015. There were 1144 cases of completion of both the Brief COPE and the MBI-GS (58%), 744 of the MBI-GS and the Mentoring survey (47%), and 1138 of the MBI-GS and Life Events Scale (57%). There were correlations between acceptance (ρ 0.1–0.24), denial (ρ 0.13–0.20), substance abuse (ρ 0.15–0.22), behavioral disengagement (ρ 0.18–.037), self-blame (ρ 0.27–0.45), self-distraction (ρ 0.18–0.32) and venting (ρ 0.15–0.47) and EE. There were correlations with acceptance (ρ 0.11–0.15), denial (ρ 0.18–0.26), humor (ρ 0.13–0.20), substance abuse (ρ 0.10–0.29), behavioral disengagement (ρ 0.19–0.40), self-blame (ρ 0.24–0.35), self-distraction (ρ 0.14–0.34) and venting (ρ 0.12–0.38) and CYN. There was a negative correlation between mentorship and EE (ρ − 0.15, − 0.18) and CYN (ρ − 0.30 to − 0.20). There were correlations between life events and EE (ρ 0.15–0.20) and CYN (ρ = 0.14–0.15). Maladaptive coping mechanisms, acceptance, and life stressors correlate with burnout in internal medicine residents and mentoring may be protective.