Agreement between the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory among emergency physicians and trainees.

Background: Emergency physicians have the highest rates of burnout among all specialties. Existing burnout tools include the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) and single-item measures from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). While both were designed to measure burnout, how they conceptualize this phenomenon differs and their agreement is unclear. Given the close conceptual relationship between emotional regulation strategies such as distancing and distraction with the MBI subscale of depersonalization, we examined agreement between the two inventories and association with emotional regulation strategies as a lens to explore the conceptualization of burnout.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of adult and pediatric emergency physicians and trainees in Canada. Survey questions were pretested using written feedback and cognitive interviews. "Frequent use" of an emotional regulation strategy was "most" or "all" shifts (≥4 on 5-point Likert scale). Burnout was defined as mean ≥50/100 on the CBI and scoring ≥5 (out of 7) on at least one of the single-item measures from the MBI. Associations with burnout were examined using multivariable logistic regression.

Results: Of 147 respondents, 44.2% were positive for burnout on the CBI and 44.9% on the single-item measures from the MBI. Disagreement was 21.1% overall, ranging from 12.5% for older (≥55 years) physicians to 30.2% for younger (<35 years) physicians. Use of distraction and use of distancing were strongly associated with burnout on the single-item measures (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 14.4, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.4-60.8]) and CBI (aOR 10.1, 95% CI 2.5-39.8, respectively.

Conclusions: Despite near-equal rates of burnout, agreement between the CBI and single-item measures from the MBI varies and was lower for younger emergency physicians/trainees. While emotional regulation strategies were felt to be important in supporting a career in emergency medicine, they were strongly associated with burnout. Future research is needed to better understand this phenomenon and which tools to use to measure burnout.