The Impact of Professional Coaching on Early Career Academic Emergency Physicians

The Impact of Professional Coaching on Early Career Academic Emergency Physician Well-Being, Burnout, Leadership Strengths, and Goal Attainment: A Pilot Randomized, Controlled Trial

This research study is designed to answer the question: How does professional coaching impact early career academic emergency medicine physician goal attainment, leadership strengths, well-being, and burnout?

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Stress; Anxiety; Leadership; Professional Role; Goals; Well-Being; Physician's Role; Professional Burnout; Development, Human
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Professional coaching

Detailed Description

A recent systematic review and meta-analysis found coaching to have significant positive effects on goal attainment, well-being, coping skills, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation. Randomized controlled studies of professional coaching have found significant positive effects in various settings including high school teachers and students, postgraduate students in a major university, and executives in the commercial, government, and education sectors.

Coaching provides the participant focused time with a trained professional who facilitates that participant's self-determined and self-directed problem-solving and change. Coaching helps the participant "get on the balcony" away from the action on the "dance floor" to see things from a different and broader perspective and, in doing so, enriches the participant's ability to generate options, challenge biases, understand the effects of emotions, and consider uncertainty.

This study also establishes the level of adult development of academic faculty and creates an initial qualitative dataset for further longitudinal study and theory generation for physician well-being, burnout, leadership strengths, and goal attainment.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 46
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Minnesota
    • Rochester, Minnesota, United States, 55905
      • Mayo Clinic in Rochester

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion:

• Emergency physicians
• Academic appointment of Instructor or Assistant Professor
• Work greater than 80% of their time in a residency and fellowship program approved by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), or the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) will be invited to participate in the study.

Exclusion:

• Mayo Clinic emergency physicians are not eligible for this study.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: One-to-One Coaching; Participants randomized to One-to-One Coaching meet for an initial 2-hour coaching session, followed by seven 1-hour coaching sessions every 3-weeks. These eight sessions take place over the course of 6 months. Additional requirements for One-to-One Coaching: Complete a 30-minute online assessment of goal attainment, well-being, burnout, and leadership strengths (a) at study enrollment, (b) at 6-months after study enrollment, and (c) 12-months following study enrollment.; Complete a 15-minute VIA Character Strengths Test online prior to One-to-One Coaching.; Following the completion of the final coaching session, participants are interviewed by a con-investigator by phone call to assess the experience of coaching. Each coaching session will be recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and analyzed to identify common themes.	Behavioral: Professional coaching; Professional coaching is provided by the Principal Investigator via video conference.; Other Names: Coaching
Active Comparator: Group Coaching; Participants meet for 90-minutes each month for 6 months for facilitated professional coaching with a group of colleagues. Additional requirements: Complete a 30-minute online assessment of goal attainment, well-being, burnout, and leadership strengths (a) at study enrollment, (b) at 6-months after study enrollment, and (c) 12-months following study enrollment.; Complete a 15-minute VIA Character Strengths Test online prior to Group Coaching.; Prior to your initial group coaching session, participate in a 75-minute private phone interview with the primary investigator to discuss the how you make decisions and make sense of the world.; Following the completion of the final coaching session, participants are interviewed by a con-investigator by phone call to assess the experience of coaching. Each coaching session will be recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and analyzed to identify common themes.	Behavioral: Professional coaching; Professional coaching is provided by the Principal Investigator via video conference.; Other Names: Coaching
No Intervention: Group Coaching Waitlist; Participants are offered group coaching at the completion of the 12-month study period. Six 90-minute group coaching sessions will occur over the course of six months. Additional requirements: • Complete a 30-minute online assessment of goal attainment, well-being, burnout, and leadership strengths (a) at study enrollment (b) and at 6-months after study enrollment.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Goal Setting and Attainment	Each participant identifies two professional goals at study onset. For each of the goals, participants respond to the question, "Up to today, how successful have you been in achieving this goal?" and rate their goal attainment on a scale from 0% (no attainment) to 100% (complete attainment). To control for differences between participants in perceived goal attainment difficulty, participants also will rate each goal for perceived difficulty on a 4-point scale ( 1=very easy, 2=somewhat easy, 3=somewhat difficult, 4=very difficult). Goal attainment scores are calculated by multiplying the difficulty rating by the degree of success.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Psychological Well-Being Scale	An 18-item survey that measures eudaemonic well-being.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Empowerment at Work Scale	A 12-item survey that measures a physician's sense of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact while at work.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Abbreviated Two-Item Maslach Burnout Inventory	A two-item survey that measures participant burnout.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS 21)	A 21-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure the severity of the core symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in both clinical and nonclinical scenarios.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Leadership Self-Efficacy Scale	A 5-item scale of leadership self-efficacy.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Self-Insight Scale	An 8-item sub-scale of the Self-reflection and Insight Scale. This scale measures individuals' levels of insight into their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Solution-Focused Thinking Scale	A 12-item scale with three subscales: Problem Disengagement, Goal Orientation, and Resource Activation.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Tolerance for Ambiguity Scale	An eight-item assessment that measures tolerance for ambiguity.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Perspective Taking Scale	A 7-item subscale of The Empathy Questionnaire that measures perspective-taking.	18 months (3 measurements at 6-month intervals)
Qualitative Summary of Coaching Program	An open-ended interview covering issues such as 1) participant's experience with the coaching process and coach; 2) participant goals; 3) impact on the participant's workplace; 4) impact on participant's personal life; and 5) what the participant plans to do to sustain any changes or learnings.	After 6-month coaching intervention. 18 months
Subject-Object Interview	A one-time 60 to 75-minute private interview that measures the particpant's order of subject-object development based upon constructive-developmental theory.	18 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Mayo Clinic
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Richard C Winters, Mayo Clinic

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Silva JAM, Mininel VA, Fernandes Agreli H, Peduzzi M, Harrison R, Xyrichis A. Collective leadership to improve professional practice, healthcare outcomes and staff well-being. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2022 Oct 10;10(10):CD013850. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD013850.pub2.
• Theeboom, T., B. Beersma, and A.E.M. van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2013. 9(1): p. 1-18.

Helpful Links

• Mayo Clinic Clinical Trials
• Website for basic information and link to interest form
• Mayo Clinic clinical trials listing

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): June 1, 2017
• Primary Completion (Actual): March 5, 2020
• Study Completion (Actual): March 5, 2020

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 12, 2017
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 19, 2017
• First Posted (Actual): April 24, 2017

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): January 6, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 4, 2021
• Last Verified: January 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Well-being; Burnout; Coaching; Emergency medicine; Goal attainment; Professional coaching; Emergency physicians; Leadership strengths; Adult level of development; Group coaching; Instructor; Assistant professor; Academic faculty; Subject-Object Interview
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Behavioral Symptoms; Pathologic Processes; Disease Attributes; Stress, Psychological; Occupational Stress; Occupational Diseases; Emergencies; Burnout, Professional; Burnout, Psychological
• Other Study ID Numbers: 16-010192

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: UNDECIDED
• IPD Plan Description: We may make anonymized individual participant data (IPD) available to other researchers. It may be available after the completion of the trial to those who contact the PI directly.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No