Review Compares Interventions for Burnout in Health Care Professionals

FRIDAY, Nov. 21, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Mindfulness-based interventions may reduce burnout among nurses and midwives and among a mixture of health care professionals (HCPs), but professional coaching appears to be most effective for reducing burnout among physicians, according to a review published online Nov. 18 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

George Collett, Ph.D., from Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues examined the effectiveness of all interventions to mitigate burnout among HCPs in a review of 93 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and six cluster RCTs evaluating individual-level interventions (9,330 participants).

The researchers found that professional coaching was probably effective in reducing some aspects of burnout among physicians (emotional exhaustion [EE] standardized mean difference [SMD], −0.37 and depersonalization SMD, −0.30), while mindfulness-based interventions appeared to not be effective. Among nurses and midwives, mindfulness-based interventions were likely to reduce burnout (EE SMD, −0.90); these interventions were also likely to reduce burnout among a mixture of HCP roles (EE SMD, −0.40; depersonalization SMD, –0.33; personal accomplishment SMD, 0.48). In general, mindfulness-based and professional coaching interventions lasted more than four weeks.

“These findings will be valuable to policymakers developing support strategies, especially given the health care shortages and high rates of burnout, particularly among primary care physicians and nurses around the world,” the authors write.

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