Doodling as a Measure of Burnout in Healthcare Researchers

Burnout adversely affects healthcare researchers, their place of employment, and the production of valuable research. It is directly associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Having an easily employed and reliable measure of depression and anxiety in healthcare researchers is important if burnout is to be diminished. Doodling may be one such measure. Doodling became a possible indicator based on unexpected outcomes associated with one diverse and voluntary health narrative research group where doodling was introduced. The result, with respect to casual, self-reported levels of depression and anxiety, ranged from researchers expressing low levels of distress to those revealing clinical diagnoses of depression and anxiety. Changes to doodling execution and content, and their effect on the doodler—metrics previously unmentioned in the literature—hold promise for evaluating depression and anxiety levels of researchers. Maligned in academic settings with increasingly punitive outcomes, doodling should be reassessed as a possible indicator of internal states of distress, dysphoria, depression, and anxiety based on this University of Toronto Health Narratives Research Group result of doodling. Under certain well-defined conditions, variations in doodling may serve as a measure of change in these internal states and, therefore, act as an aid in reducing burnout.