Agreement between the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory among emergency physicians and trainees

Background Emergency physicians have the highest rates of burnout among all specialties. Existing burnout tools include the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) and single‐item measures from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). While both were designed to measure burnout, how they conceptualize this phenomenon differs and their agreement is unclear. Given the close conceptual relationship between emotional regulation strategies such as distancing and distraction with the MBI subscale of depersonalization, we examined agreement between the two inventories and association with emotional regulation strategies as a lens to explore the conceptualization of burnout. Methods We conducted a cross‐sectional survey of adult and pediatric emergency physicians and trainees in Canada. Survey questions were pretested using written feedback and cognitive interviews. “Frequent use” of an emotional regulation strategy was “most” or “all” shifts (≥4 on 5‐point Likert scale). Burnout was defined as mean ≥50/100 on the CBI and scoring ≥5 (out of 7) on at least one of the single‐item measures from the MBI. Associations with burnout were examined using multivariable logistic regression. Results Of 147 respondents, 44.2% were positive for burnout on the CBI and 44.9% on the single‐item measures from the MBI. Disagreement was 21.1% overall, ranging from 12.5% for older (≥55 years) physicians to 30.2% for younger (