Presentation

· Contributors · Organizations · Search Program · Flagged · Happening Now

Measuring Hospitalist Workload: The Impact of Provider Role, Burnout, and Patient Familiarity

DescriptionAs inpatient care shifts toward home-based alternatives, hospitalized patients are increasingly medically complex, placing greater demands on hospitalists. Traditional workload measures, such as patient counts, fail to capture the variability in care needs. This study used the NASA Task Load Index (NASA TLX) to assess patient-specific subjective workload (WL) ratings among 60 hospital internal medicine providers over one month, covering 824 unique patients. Providers completed daily surveys, including burnout ratings, patient encounter data, and a TLX rating for each patient seen. Using linear mixed-effects models, we examined predictors of WL, including number of unique patient encounters, provider role, number of days the provider had seen the patient, days on service, and burnout level. All variables except patient length of stay significantly predicted WL (p < .05). Greater WL was associated with more unique encounters, earlier days on service, and higher burnout. Providers reported lower WL when seeing patients they had previously treated. Physicians serving as sole providers reported higher WL than those supervising APPs. These findings demonstrate that subjective workload is influenced by provider role and continuity with patients, and should be considered in workload allocation to promote equity and prevent burnout.

Contributors