Biopsychosocial approach to burnout and reintegration

1) WeMeds is an interuniversity project (including the five Flemish Universities) that aims to unravel the most important predictors of burnout and engagement in medical students and doctors in training, while at the same time gaining insight into effective interventions to prevent burnout. The longitudinal design of the study encompasses the full training path of physicians; including a wide range of medical specializations (such as general practitioners, emergency medicine, etc.). We focus on a biopsychosocial perspective by collecting psychosocial data from the participants via an online questionnaire (i.e. work-related, personal and context variables) and by examining biomarkers related to burnout mechanisms. The work of the PhD student will mainly focus on the development of a recruitment protocol for the above mentioned psychosocial data and for the collection of biological samples. In addition, the doctoral student will perform laboratory analyzes of the biomarkers, as well as connect and interpret the results. 2) METEOR (MenTal hEalth: focus onRetention of healthcare workers) is an international EU funded project aiming to improve job retention among healthcare workers. METEOR will do this in the first instance by gaining insight into the most important determinants of job retention in this target group. In a next step, METEOR will develop concrete policy recommendations for the intended stakeholders, which will be translated into an online toolbox. As the coordinator of the project, the Environmental Health research group of KU Leuven is responsible for the coordination and management of the project's activities. The work of the doctoral student within this project includes, among others, the following activities: attending/coordination of project meetings, administrative follow-up according to EU guidelines and recruitment and communication activities. In addition, KU Leuven is leading the work package with the aim of developing concrete policy recommendations. To this end, we will organize workshops with different stakeholders according to the methodology of co-creation or user-centered design thinking, to ensure that these recommendations meet the needs of stakeholders. 3) OPERATal health: Objectifying performance assessments and personalized rehabilitation trajectories to improve return to work in failed back surgery syndrome patients. Patients who, despite prior surgery, continue to suffer from persistent or recurrent back pain are identified as having Failed Back Surgery Syndrome (FBSS). A recent meta-analysis found that neurostimulation is an effective treatment for getting these patients back to work. Nevertheless, less than 30% of patients who receive neurostimulation eventually go back to work. This demonstrates that current postoperative care, including rehabilitation, is not effective in promoting return to work after neurostimulator implantation. With this project, we aim to promote an individualized biopsychosocial approach to increase physical capacity to return to work in FBSS patients receiving a neurostimulator. To this end, we will conduct a randomized, controlled trial in which FBSS patients receiving neurostimulation receive either standard treatment or a rehabilitation program with a specific focus on return to work. The effect of both interventions will be examined on physical capacity to return to work, work status and health care expenditure.