Oncologists’ negative attitudes towards expressing emotion over patient death and burnout

Purpose The aims of this study were to examine the relationship between negative attitudes towards expressing emotion following patient death and burnout in oncologists and to explore oncologists’ preferences for institutional interventions to deal with patient death. Methods The participants included a convenience sample of 177 oncologists from Israel and Canada. Oncologists completed a questionnaire package that included a sociodemographic survey, a burnout measure, a survey assessing negative attitudes towards expressing emotion, and a survey assessing desired interventions to cope with patient death. To examine the association between burnout and negative attitudes while controlling for the effect of sociodemographic variables, a hierarchical linear regression was computed. Results Higher burnout scores were related to higher negative attitudes towards perceived expressed emotion (partial r = .25, p