Emotional Exhaustion Among Critical Care Respiratory Therapists

Introduction: Respiratory therapists (RTs) working full time in the ICU may have an increased risk of burnout. We hypothesized that RTs working in the ICU would have a high rate of emotional exhaustion.


Methods: We performed a secondary analysis of a multicenter study of RT emotional exhaustion (burnout). Working full time in critical care was defined as > 30 hours per week. We compared those with emotional exhaustion to those without and performed univariate logistic regression, reported as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval due to missing data.


Results: The original study included 1033 responses with a response rate of 34% and emotional exhaustion rate of 70%. Of these, 496 (48%) respondents worked > 30 hours per week in critical care, with 376 (76%) suffering from burnout. Increased risk of emotional exhaustion was statistically significantly associated with others being burned out (OR 14.5 [8.3-25.2]), intention to leave their current position (OR 10.4 [6.2-17.3]), reporting workload was too high (OR 4.9 [3.2-7.8]), working without adequate staff (OR 4.5 [2.8-7.3]), exposed to incivility (OR 4.4 [2.3-8.4]), had their activities restricted due to illness (OR 3.2 [1.7-5.8]), missed work for any reason (OR 2.2 [1.4-3.4]), unable to complete their work for > 50% of shifts (OR 2.2 [1.3-3.5]), and being an RT for 2-5 years vs > 10 years (OR 1.9 [1.0-3.5]). Statistically significant protective variables included feeling valued by their organization (OR 0.1 [0.1-0.2]), their manager/director cared about them (OR 0.1 [0.10-0.2]), a positive leadership score (OR 0.2 [0.1-0.3]), being an RT for < 2 years (OR 0.3 [0.1-0.8]), being satisfied with total compensation (OR 0.31 [0.2-0.5]), and spending their day doing high value activities (OR 0.6 [0.4-0.95]). Other variables were not associated with burnout.


Conclusions: Critical care RTs exhibited concerning levels of burnout, with over three quarters of RTs working full time in the ICU meeting criteria for emotional exhaustion. RTs with emotional exhaustion were 10 times more likely to intend to leave their current position and twice as likely to report missing work. Feeling valued, satisfaction with compensation, and leadership were protective against burnout while work environment, workload, and incivility, were associated with an increased risk.