The Impact of Health Disparities on Physicians’ Occupational Wellbeing During COVID-19: A Qualitative Analysis from Four US Cities

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Hosp Med
• Personal Author:
  Browne, Alyssa ; Jenkins, Tania ; Berlinger, Nancy ; Buchbinder, Liza ; Buchbinder, Mara
• Description:
  Objective:
  
  To describe frontline physicians’ perceptions of the impact of ethnic/racial and socioeconomic disparities in COVID-19 infection and mortality on their occupational wellbeing.
  
  Methods:
  
  145 qualitative, semi-structured interviews conducted between February 2021 and June 2022 with hospital medicine, emergency medicine, pulmonary critical care, and palliative care physicians caring for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in four U.S. cities.
  
  Results:
  
  Physicians reported drivers of COVID-related health disparities at the societal, organizational, and individual levels. Health disparities, in turn, contributed to stress among frontline physicians, whose concerns revealed how structural conditions both shaped COVID disparities and constrained their ability to protect marginalized populations from poor outcomes. Physicians reported feeling complicit in the perpetuation of disparities or helpless to address observed disparities, and experienced feelings of grief and guilt, moral distress, and burnout.
  
  Conclusions:
  
  Health inequities are an under-acknowledged source of physicians’ occupational stress that require solutions beyond the clinical context.
  
  
• Keywords:
  Cities COVID-19 Health Care Quality Health Disparities Health Inequities Health Sciences Research Humans Occupational Wellbeing Physicians Qualitative Studies
• Source:
  J Hosp Med. 18(7):595-602
• Pubmed ID:
  37070735
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC10783652
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  R21 OH012175/OH/NIOSH CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  18
• Issue:
  7
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:481519fb5640de186a6dd1875e46d11085e5b087ddab2fa0d694269e26919c0a
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/140750/cdc_140750_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 223.06 KB ]