Burnout in healthcare is a hot topic. The concept of burnout in the medical profession represents a syndrome with several symptoms including exhaustion, frustration, and a feeling of failure or reduced personal accomplishment (1).

How does burnout affect us as medical practitioners? It can have significant negative consequences including low job satisfaction, can lead to increased medical errors, and serious mental health issues (1). If we’re burnt out, it’s difficult to be as engaged or empathetic with patients (1).  

Working in health care first as an registered nurse, and now as a nurse practitioner, I’ve caught myself numerous times falling prey to the negative thoughts of burn out. Thankfully, I love my career, but I want to do everything possible to prevent burnout. This got me thinking about what leads to burnout. Is it work environment? Personal stress? Personality traits?

There are multiple causes of burnout including work-related factors (e.g. poor work-life balance, low job satisfaction, excessive work demands) (1, 2), and personal factors (e.g. balancing personal and professional demands, personality traits) (1). What struck my interest was personality and how this may be implicated in burnout.

This led to a deep dive and completing a quiz on the Five Factor model – which we might remember from an undergraduate psychology course. The “big five” stipulates there are five personality traits: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness (3). Personality encompasses how we interact with the environment around us (1) – how we respond to people, places, experiences, and situations. One study exploring primary care physician personality traits and burnout demonstrated that high neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are correlated with burnout (1).

I reflected on my own test results and was able to gain insight into why I feel emotionally exhausted at times working in the medical profession. Neuroticism was an interesting trait to reflect on – the extent to which one experiences negative symptoms (anxiety, self-doubt, irritability etc.) in response to distressing experiences and perceived threats or stressors. Did I do everything I could for that patient? I missed something and now X is going to happen. These thoughts rang true for me and certainly cause distress at times.

Agreeableness was another trait that was helpful to reflect on – the extent to which a person is cooperative, sympathetic, tolerant, forgiving of others, and avoidant of conflict (3). A highly agreeable person faced with conflict can cause a great deal of distress. In medicine, we are constantly faced with conflict. I certainly can relate to this and have worked on being more accepting of conflict (it is simply part of life and part of being a professional). 

All in all, more research needs to be done on how personality can impact burnout for medical professionals. I believe that we could all gain a deeper awareness of how personality impacts our emotions, thoughts, and behaviours in the world around us. Having insight into our personality traits can help build on strengths and be more accepting of flaws. Finally, having a greater insight into our personality may develop a deeper understanding into what work environments provide a better fit. It’s important to find a job that fits with our personality type to prevent burnout in medicine (which requires trial, error, and reflection!) We can’t change our personalities, but we can modify the environment around us to mitigate stress and burnout – which is important if we want to build a community of resilient diagnosticians – of nurse practitioners, physicians, and physician assistants.

I highly recommend completing the Big 5 personality assessment so you can develop a deeper understanding of the language and themes on this topic and a way to frame how your personality fits within professional practice (there are free and paid versions online).

BOTTOM LINE: Reflect on why you might be burning out - is it the work environment? Are you dealing with internal or external conflict? Is your work place a good fit for your personality?

References/Readings

1. Brown PA, Slater M, Lofters A. Personality and burnout among primary care physicians: an international study. Psychology research and behavior management. 2019;12:169-77.

2. Zhou AY, Panagioti M, Esmail A, Agius R, Van Tongeren M, Bower P. Factors Associated With Burnout and Stress in Trainee Physicians: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA network open. 2020;3(8):e2013761.

3. Angelini G. Big five model personality traits and job burnout: a systematic literature review. BMC Psychology. 2023;11(1):49-