ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1627734
The association of Physician-Clinical Pharmacist Collaboration Frequency and Experience on Physician Burnout: Are There Gender Differences
Provisionally accepted
- 1China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China
- 2Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
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Introduction: Burnout is a widespread issue among physicians globally, with pronounced gender disparities observed in China.This paper aims to analyze the collaboration characteristics between clinical pharmacists and physicians in China, examine the impact of collaboration experience and frequency on physician burnout, and explore potential gender differences in these mechanisms to improve collaboration efficiency and reduce physician burnout. Collaboration experience was measured using the "Physician Experience" dimension from the Kuwait questionnaire. Collaboration frequency was assessed by asking physicians how often they collaborate with clinical pharmacists in their daily work. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between July and August 2019 across 93 urban clusters in 31 Chinese provinces. The paper examined collaboration frequency and experience between physicians and clinical pharmacists in secondary and tertiary healthcare institutions, as well as physician burnout status. Data were analyzed using ordinal logistic regression models. Results: A total of 1,381 questionnaires were distributed and 1,322 were included in the analysis. The results indicate that both the collaboration frequency and experiences between physicians and clinical pharmacists are negatively correlated with burnout. Additionally, gender shows an interactive effect in the negative relationships among collaboration frequency, collaboration experiences, and burnout. Specifically, the inclusion of gender as a variable weakened the negative correlation between collaboration frequency and the cynicism sub-dimension of job burnout. At the same level of collaboration experience, female physicians reported higher levels of cynicism and reduced personal accomplishment in job burnout compared to their male counterparts. Conclusion: This paper suggests that increasing collaboration frequency between physicians and clinical pharmacists, improving the collaborative experience, and paying particular attention to female physicians' needs can better reduce physician burnout and improve healthcare service efficiency and quality.
Keywords: burnout, collaboration, Pharmacists, Physicians, Gender equity
Received: 13 May 2025; Accepted: 09 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jiang, Zhang, WAN, Wu, Huang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuankai Huang, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.