Academic faculty demonstrate higher well-being than residents: Pennsylvania anesthesiology programs' results of the 2017–2018 ACGME well-being survey

Abstract Study objective Physician burnout and suicide are at epidemic proportions. There is very little data directly comparing resident versus faculty well-being. The 2017–2018 ACGME resident and faculty surveys mark the first time that well-being questions were included. The purpose of this study was to determine whether responses to ACGME well-being questions would differ significantly between anesthesiology residents and academic anesthesiology faculty. Design 2017–2018 ACGME well-being survey responses. Setting All eight Pennsylvania anesthesiology residency programs. Patients None. Interventions None. Measurements The authors compared the 5-point Likert scale responses (1 = Never through 5 = Very Often) between residents (371/384 responses, 97%) and faculty (277/297 responses, 93%) for each of the twelve well-being questions. Responses were also dichotomized as being ≥4 versus Main results Faculty responded higher than residents both by mean scores and percent of scores ≥ 4 for 6/12 questions (questions 1 (p  Conclusions Pennsylvania academic anesthesiology faculty survey responses demonstrated a higher level of well-being compared to their residents. The variation in scoring suggests that anesthesiology residents and faculty have differing perceptions of various well-being domains. Information from well-being surveys can help provide programs with focus areas that they can intervene on to improve physician well-being.