P0463 - Emotional debriefing following patient deaths with pediatric residents in an intensive care unit

Background
Patient deaths can be emotionally distressing and can cause healthcare providers to feel a sense of failure, inadequacy, guilt, and self-doubt. Often these feelings go unaddressed and can be a catalyst for burnout, emotional exhaustion, decreased job satisfaction, and compromised patient care. Pediatric residents are particularly vulnerable, as they are in the front lines of care and are often experiencing death for the first time. However, studies have shown that if grief is addressed early, it can alleviate anxiety, allow for personal growth, increase job satisfaction and even prevent burnout. Post-event debriefs are frequently used to improve medical care, but rarely offer trainees the opportunity to process the grief reaction or develop appropriate coping mechanisms.


Objective:
To identify improvement in emotional debriefing amongst trainees after implementation of a standardized program. To identify changes in emotional distress, burnout and coping mechanisms amongst residents after implementation of an emotional debrief following patients’ death or poor outcomes.

Methods
Study participation was completely voluntary. Faculty in the critical care and palliative care department underwent training and were provided with a standardized form prior to facilitating debriefs. All residents in the PICU rotation were offered the emotional debrief regardless of participation in the study.
Those who wished to enter the program were provided with an anonymous pre and post survey that investigated the frequency and quality of provider-centric emotional patient death debriefings. Questions regarding preferred coping mechanisms, feelings of burnout and emotional distress were also assessed in the survey.

Results
Data collection and analysis is ongoing.

Conclusions
There is potential for this study to demonstrate the need and benefit of implementing a standardized emotional debriefing following patient deaths for residents.