CE-CERT for prevention of burnout for attending physicians and general pediatric residents: A grounded theory investigation

Background: Physician burnout has been identified as a significant occupational hazard for decades. Burnout prevention may target individual and workplace environment factors; however, a gold standard approach to prevention has yet to be established. Components for Enhancing Clinician Experience and Reducing Trauma (CE-CERT) is both a practice and peer supervision model for promoting wellness among helping professionals. This study sought to explore the experiences of a group of attending physicians at a mid-size pediatric residency program in an urban free-standing children’s hospital as they learned and implemented CE-CERT. Methods: A total of seven attending physicians participated in CE-CERT during the academic year between 2020 and 2021. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five of the seven participants (71%) after completion of the program to explore their experiences with CE-CERT in their personal and professional lives. Through constructivist grounded theory methods, attending physician experiences with CE-CERT were systematically analyzed. Results: Rigorous analysis revealed six common themes around the attending experiences with the CE-CERT model in their personal and professional lives. The six themes were as follows: 1) It’s given me a framework, 2) It’s given me insight, 3) Taking a minute, 4) Gave me skills to use, 5) You can do this without being overwhelmed, and 6) We connected. The themes were organized in a pictorial representation of their interactions. Conclusions: This study found that the CE-CERT program taught skills and concepts to our sample of attending physicians that were applicable and promoted self-motivation with potential to mitigate burnout and promote compassion satisfaction and professional quality of life.