Andrew Wu

Andrew Wu, MD is currently in his final year of psychiatric residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Harvard Psychiatry Residency Training Program. He is also a part-time Dupont-Warren psychiatry research fellow at Harvard Medical School. Prior to his medical training at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, he majored in biology and economics at Duke University. Since his residency training, Dr. Wu has been interested in investigating physician burnout due to his own personal experiences with burnout and witnessing its effects on his colleagues throughout his medical training. With his background in economics, he familiarized himself with discrete choice modelling and sought to apply this to investigating physician burnout.

Dr. Wu utilized MaxDiff/best-worst scaling (BWS) to investigate how resident physician preferences differed for common wellness interventions to address physician burnout across 9 different specialties in a single teaching institution. Furthermore, he used anchored MaxDiff to evaluate how residents assigned importance to these interventions, especially since residents have historically underutilized these interventions. He also deployed a second MaxDiff set investigate relative importance of common resident work-stressors that could contribute to physician burnout.

The findings of this large single-institution study found that more than 50% of all 267 surveyed physician residents would realistically consider individualized wellness interventions of psychotherapy and executive coaching, compared to less than 25% for either group- or individually-based peer support options. Top-ranking institution-wide stressors for physician residents included work-life integration, electronic health record documentation, limited autonomy, and perceived inadequate support.

Dr. Wu intends to continue to combine his interests in physician burnout and discrete choice modelling with continued work on establishing physician preferences related to institution wellness initiatives and as a clinical psychiatrist.