COVID-19 has brought the issue of healthcare provider fatigue to the forefront of national conversation, but experts at Houston Methodist have been studying it for many years.

During the initial COVID-19 surge in Houston, a team of researchers led by Faisal N. Masud, MD, the Mary A. and M. Samuel Daffin, Sr. Centennial Chair in Anesthesia and Critical Care at Houston Methodist, and Farzan Sasangohar, PhD, assistant professor of outcomes research, published a paper in Anesthesia & Analgesia discussing factors that contribute to provider fatigue and burnout in intensive care units (ICUs) during the pandemic. The article, which remained in Altmetric’s top 99th percentile of publications for months, was one of the first to propose specific policy recommendations for organizational readiness, resilience and disaster mitigation, many of which were already in place at Houston Methodist.

Most studies investigating burnout, including the aforementioned, rely on self-reporting measures that are inherently prone to bias. To better maintain objectivity, Sasangohar, Masud and their teams employed wearable technology to provide quantitative measurements of stress and anxiety levels in ICU workers. Participating ICU staff were observed while wearing eye-tracking glasses with a built-in camera that recorded exactly what the wearer was seeing and hearing in real time. The information collected from this device was paired with heart rate data and self-reported observations to provide a more complete picture of stress triggers and reactions.

Masud, who is also the medical director of critical care at Houston Methodist Hospital, has been passionate about finding transformational solutions to support the mental well-being of intensive care personnel. “The wearable technology study could provide the evidence-based solutions we need to fill the knowledge gap in health care provider stress and burnout,” he said. “COVID-19 and its far-reaching psychological implications have brought a greater sense of urgency to our work.”