Narrative Medicine Effects on Burnout and Stress

A rising area of interest over the past several years has been on the issue of physician burnout. Burnout can be defined as a chronic occupational stress response characterized by multi-dimensional exhaustion and diminished sense of fulfillment in one's personal and professional life. Regarding the effects of emotional, occupational and physical stress on job satisfaction, standard of care and staff retention, it is important to determine meaningful methods to alleviate and prevent burnout among healthcare professionals.

Common coping strategies for burnout and occupational stress are related to social, emotional and physical factors. Community support, physical care and activity, as well as distancing from work have been found to be particularly efficient. Similarities among burnout strategies include cultivating community and building a sense of shared understanding. Additionally, improving self-awareness and regulating emotions are often the desired outcome of these strategies. Extending these strategies outside of workplace initiatives and into convenient, personal spaces has been suggested to preserve work-life balance. Thus, narrative medicine offers a space for these strategies to culminate in flash writing. Narrative medicine has been proposed as a model for humane and effective medicine, combining narrative competence and medical practice. Using this model, gaining narrative competence has the ability to positively impact the lives of healthcare professionals and patients, as well as interprofessional teams and broader organizations. The efficacy of flash writing to gain this competence as well as manage the burnout stressors that would typically detract from narrative medicine warrants research into this area. Flash writing offers the opportunity to investigate the relationship between reflective/ creative writing and burnout. Flash writing can be understood as short-form, creative pieces written in one's personal style. This type of writing exercise can be performed prompted or unprompted, takes approximately 5-10 minutes to complete and is meant to serve the psychological needs of the author. As such, its implementation in burnout alleviation or prevention as well as acute stress reduction may serve as an easily accessible, efficient and customizable strategy.