Impact of Sexual Harassment and Social Support on Burnout in Physician Mothers

Workplace sexual harassment significantly contributes to burnout among physician mothers. However, fostering a supportive community among physician mothers can play a role in enhancing their sense of professional efficacy.

• The majority of physician mothers experienced workplace sexual harassment, which was associated with higher levels of burnout.
  • 65 percent of the survey respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment in the past year.
  • This harassment was linked to increased emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, which are critical dimensions of burnout.
  • Harassment from patients correlated with a 0.27 point increase in emotional exhaustion, which equates to the emotional toll of working an additional 22 hours per week.
• When physician mothers were primed to reflect on their social connectedness with other physician mothers, there was a significant increase in their sense of personal accomplishment.
  • However, this priming did not significantly affect the other two dimension of burnout, namely emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.
  • This suggests that while support can enhance feelings of accomplishment and potentially counteract one aspect of burnout, it may not be sufficient to mitigate the entire spectrum of burnout symptoms.

This study utilized a mixed-methods approach that combined a cross-sectional survey with an embedded experimental design to examine the effects of workplace sexual harassment and social support on burnout among physician mothers.

The survey was distributed to members of the Physician Moms Group (PMG), an online Facebook group consisting of over 70,000 physicians who identify as mothers. The study included responses from 1,627 physician mothers, assessing the prevalence of workplace sexual harassment and its association with burnout. Within the survey, an experiment was embedded to measure the causal impact of priming perceived social support on burnout. Participants were randomly assigned to either a treatment group, primed to reflect on their social connectedness before answering the burnout inventory, or a control group, which answered the social connectedness questions after the burnout inventory.

Variables measured were burnout as dependent variables, and sexual harassment and social support as independent variables.

• Burnout was measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) focusing on three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Each dimension was assessed separately to capture distinct aspects of burnout.
• Sexual harassment was assessed through questions adapted from the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), covering harassment by both patients and colleagues across three dimensions: gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion.
• Social support was manipulated through a priming intervention by asking participants to reflect on their connectedness with other PMG members. This variable aimed to test the impact of perceived social support on burnout.

This methodology was designed to allow the study to explore not only the correlation between sexual harassment and burnout, but also to experimentally test the potential mitigating effects of social support on burnout among physician mothers.