Session Information
Date: Saturday, November 16, 2019
Session Title: Quality Improvement Case and Research Report
Session Time: 11:15am-12:45pm
Location: Research Hub - Kiosk 8
Disclosures: Tracey Isidro, MD: Nothing to disclose
Objective: Seventy-five percent of residents reported symptoms of burnout from stressors including increased time demands and frequent interruptions from pagers, nurses, and physicians. We aimed to determine if adjustments to systemic education could reduce the number of non-urgent pages overnight to the on-call resident by 50% in an attempt to decrease burnout among PM&R residents.
Design: Prospective study
Setting: Rehabilitation hospital: TIRR Memorial Hermann
Participants: Resident physicians rotating at TIRR
Interventions: Pages for “EKG results:” Instructed on-call residents to order the admission EKG for the next day. Instructed respiratory therapists (RT) to send EKG results via hospital text, not by page. Pages for “to change RT orders:” instructed RTs to discuss changes with primary teams.
Main Outcome Measures: Number of pages for EKG results, non-critical labs results, information to pass onto day team, and change of RT orders.
Results: There was a 57.5% decrease in the number of total pages and average number of pages per night (pre-intervention: 120 total with an average of 2.35 pages/night vs. post-intervention: 51 total with an average number of 1.50 pages/night). Post intervention, the number of pages related to EKG results decreased from 28 to 10 (64% total decrease; 46.4% decrease in daily pages), non-critical labs decreased from 21 to 8 (62% total decrease; 68.6% decrease in daily pages), information to pass onto day team increased from 17 to 27 (59% total increase; 1.9% increase in daily pages), and RT orders decreased from 16 to 6 (63% total decrease; 85.7% decrease in daily pages).
Conclusions: We achieved our goal of decreasing the number of total non-urgent pages by 50% with the interventions of scheduling EKGs the following day and encouraging RTs to address order changes with primary teams. Our interventions may be promising in improving patient care and safety, increasing workflow efficiency, addressing pager fatigue, and ultimately, preventing resident burnout.
Level of Evidence: Level I
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Isidro T, Newman MS, Hui KH, Mollett PJ, Wu AK, Zhang B, Karri J, Verduzco-Gutierrez M. Pager Fatigue: Combating Resident Burnout [abstract]. PM R. 2019; 11(S2)(suppl 2). https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/pager-fatigue-combating-resident-burnout/. Accessed May 12, 2025.« Back to AAPM&R Annual Assembly 2019
PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/pager-fatigue-combating-resident-burnout/