P3.198: Leveling Up Wellness: Evaluating a Gamified Incentive Program for Pediatric Resident Well-Being

Background: Many pediatric residents experience burnout, characterized by increased stress, depression, and negative attitudes towards patient care. While the ACGME emphasizes prioritizing resident well-being and focusing on systems-based solutions, barriers like time constraints and lack of motivation persist. Physician wellness encompasses the interconnections of physical, social, and mental factors contributing to joy in medicine and job satisfaction. At our institution, we introduced a gamified wellness program that promotes self-care and team building, using a scoring system and incentives to enhance wellness activity participation. We aim to improve residents' well-being, foster relationships, and increase participation in wellness activities.

Methods: We conducted a single-center, longitudinal survey study assessing resident wellness before and after program implementation. Residents were grouped into teams, and competed to earn points by engaging in wellness activities and documenting participation; group activities earned more points compared to individual activities. The outcome was overall wellness, measured by the validated "Resident Wellness Scale," comprising six wellness domains: ability (AB), institutional support (IS), life security (LS), meaningful work (MW), personal growth (PG), and social support (SS). Supplementary survey questions such as barriers to wellness were included. Surveys are distributed quarterly to monitor changes in wellness. Our aim is an average score > 4 sustained throughout the domains over a three-year period. Statistical analyses performed using unpaired 2-tailed t-tests on Prism. P-value < 0.05 considered statistically significant.

Results: Baseline pre-survey wellness scores (lowest to highest): MW = 3.3, AB = 3.4, LS = 3.5, PG = 3.9, IS = 3.9, SS = 4.4; post-survey scores after the first quarter: MW = 3.2, AB = 3.1, LS = 3.8, PG = 3.6, IS = 3.8, SS = 4.0 (figure 1). Social support significantly decreased but remained the highest-rated domain. Engaging in physical activity, spending meaningful time with co-residents outside of clinical activity, and pursuing hobby/interest outside of medicine, increased (figure 2a). Barriers to wellness—lack of time, motivation, and companionship—decreased with the program (figure 2b). Despite minimal score changes, 71% of residents found the program beneficial.

Conclusion: We did not see a significant improvement in wellness after the first quarter of the study, however, as Quarter 1 ranged from October to January, seasonal effects may have influenced responses. Although not significant, there were improvements in physical activity, spending meaningful time with co-residents outside of clinical activity, and pursuing hobby/interest outside of medicine in addition to reductions in barriers to wellness participation. We believe this program represents a systems-based solution to improve the culture and attitude towards engaging in wellness activities. As this is an ongoing project with continuing data collection, in the long term, we expect it will foster social support amongst residents and increase activity participation that can lead to a measurable positive impact on wellness.