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Cited by 75Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnoutOccupational Health and BurnoutCOVID-19 and Mental Health

Systematic review of interventions to improve the psychological well-being of general practitioners

Open access
Murray, Marylou, Murray, Lois, Donnelly, Michael·2016·BMC Family Practice
DOI 10.1186/s12875-016-0431-1PMC PMC4806499
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Abstract

BACKGROUND: The health of doctors who work in primary care is threatened by workforce and workload issues. There is a need to find and appraise ways in which to protect their mental health, including how to achieve the broader, positive outcome of well-being. Our primary outcome was to evaluate systematically the research evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve General Practitioner (GP) well-being across two continua; psychopathology (mental ill-health focus) and 'languishing to flourishing' (positive mental health focus). In addition we explored the extent to which developments in well-being research may be integrated within existing approaches to design an intervention that will promote mental health and prevent mental illness among these doctors. METHODS: Medline, Embase, Cinahl, PsychINFO, Cochrane Register of Trials and Web of Science were searched from inception to January 2015 for studies where General Practitioners and synonyms were the primary participants. Eligible interventions included mental ill-health prevention strategies (e.g. promotion of early help-seeking) and mental health promotion programmes (e.g. targeting the development of protective factors at individual and organizational levels). A control group was the minimum design requirement for study inclusion and primary outcomes had to be assessed by validated measures of well-being or mental ill-health. Titles and abstracts were assessed independently by two reviewers with 99% agreement and full papers were appraised critically using validated tools. RESULTS: Only four studies (with a total of 997 GPs) from 5392 titles met inclusion criteria. The studies reported statistically significant improvement in self-reported mental ill-health. Two interventions used cognitive-behavioural techniques, one was mindfulness-based and one fed-back GHQ scores and self-help information. CONCLUSION: There is an urgent need for high quality, controlled studies in GP well-being. Research on improving GP well-being is limited by focusing mainly on stressors and not giving systematic attention to the development of positive mental health.

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  • Interventions that do not greatly disrupt daily productivity are more easily implemented for longer time periods and make longer term follow-up assessments more achievable.

    “Interventions that do not greatly disrupt daily productivity are more easily implemented for longer time periods and make longer term follow-up assessments more achievable.30–32”

    From Workplace interventions to improve well-being and reduce burnout for nurses, physicians and allied healthcare professionals: a systematic review. (2023) · cites this paper as [32]

    The Discussion (Application of positive psychology; page unavailable) cites GP time shortages as a possible reason for one intervention’s limited success, but does not address disruption to daily productivity or whether less disruptive interventions can be sustained longer. The Results (page unavailable) state that none of the reviewed studies reported long-term follow-up of mental ill-health; they do not link follow-up feasibility to intervention burden. Searches for productivity, implementation, and long-term follow-up found no passage establishing the claimed relationship. (LLM, conf=0.72)

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Authors
Murray, M., Murray, L., & Donnelly, M.
Affiliations
  • Queen's University Belfast (GB)
  • Health Education North West (GB)
Corresponding author
Murray, Marylou
ORCID
Venue
BMC Family Practice
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2016-03-24
Volume
17
Issue
1
Pages
36-36
ISSN
1471-2296 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1186/s12875-016-0431-1
PMC
PMC4806499
OpenAlex
W2312020887
Cited by
75
References
95
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 3 · 2013: 1
FWCI
1.91
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • BMC Family Practice (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
Department of Employment and Learning
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Occupational Health and Burnout
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
Keywords
general practitioners, psychological well-being, mental illness, positive mental health, eudaimonia, mental health promotion, mental illness prevention, early help-seeking, cognitive-behavioural intervention, mindfulness-based interventions, primary care providers, workload
MeSH terms
Health Promotion, Humans, Mental Health, Occupational Health, General Practitioners

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