EMPIRICAL REPORT A One-Year Institutional View of Resident Physician Burnout Carol R. Thrush 1 & J. Benjamin Guise 1 & Molly M. Gathright 1 & Erick Messias 1 & Victoria Flynn 1 & Toby Belknap 1 & Purushottam B. Thapa 1 & D. Keith Williams 1 & Eman M. Nada 2 & James A. Clardy 1 Received: 27 April 2018 /Accepted: 13 February 2019 # Academic Psychiatry 2019 Abstract Objectives This prospective study explores the prevalence, associated characteristics, and trajectory of burnout over one aca- demic year in a multidisciplinary sample of resident physicians using a relatively new burnout survey instrument. Methods All residents from a U.S. academic health center (n = 633) were invited to complete the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) three times, with 4-month time lags between invitations. A total of 281 (44%) provided complete CBI survey responses at least once, and 43 (7%) did at all three times. Descriptive statistics, cross-sectional analyses, correlations, and multivariable linear regression analyses were computed, as well as repeated measures ANOVAs and paired t tests, as appropriate, for each CBI domain (personal, work, patient-related burnout). Results About half had CBI scores indicating moderate-to-high levels of personal burnout (49–52%) and work-related burnout (45–49%), whereas patient-related burnout was less common (14–24%). However, patient-related burnout increased significantly from the beginning to the end of the year. Regression analyses indicated patient-related burnout was significantly higher for postgraduate year 1–2 residents compared to PGY 4+ residents, but was not significantly different by gender. Personal and work burnout scores were significantly higher for females. Persistently high burnout was observed in only 6% of respondents. Conclusions In this study of resident physicians using the CBI, burnout was prevalent and higher levels of burnout were observed for females on the personal and work burnout domains, while junior residents had higher patient-related burnout. Persistently, high burnout was rare. The CBI demonstrated high reliability, was practical to administer, and produced similar results with existing burnout research. Keywords Internship/residency . Burnout . Prevalence . Survey Physician burnout has been a topic of increasing research interest in recent years, with some researchers suggesting the scale of the problem represents a “public health crisis” [1]. Professional and personal consequences of physician burnout have been shown to exist at both the health system and indi- vidual levels including outcomes such as decreased quality of care, increased medical error and malpractice rates, costly job turnover, maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., substance abuse, etc.), and increased risk for suicide [1, 2]. Thus, understand- ing, measuring, and preventing burnout have become a high priority in academic medicine [1, 3, 4]. Higher rates and severity of burnout have been observed in residents compared to medical students, early career physi- cians, and the general population [5]. The prevalence of burn- out in residents has been shown to vary widely ranging any- where from 27% to 75% [6, 7]. A few studies have examined the variability and progression of burnout symptoms over the course of residency training, but the majority of these have been limited to samples from a single specialty or subgroup (e.g., interns) [8–11]. To date, the vast majority of studies on physician burnout have utilized the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which operationalizes burnout using measures of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplish- ment [ 12]. Although it is often referred to as the gold standard [13], not at all burnout researchers agree with the MBI definition of burnout [ 14, 15]. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) employed in this study operationalizes burnout primarily using measures of fatigue and exhaustion broadly (personal burnout), and how respondents perceive elements of burnout as being * Carol R. Thrush thrushcarolr@uams.edu 1 University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA 2 University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA Academic Psychiatry https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-019-01043-9