Burnout among HIV care providers: contextual understanding and measurements

Abstract

Burnout among healthcare workers is a challenge for the availability and quality of healthcare services in many countries. Overall, burnout has far-reaching implications on doctors, patients, and the healthcare system. For example, emotionally and physically exhausted workers become less attentive and make mistakes more often. Moreover, contextual features of the healthcare system and the organizational culture of healthcare institutions can contribute to burnout prevention and vice versa. Burnout among healthcare workers also increases the risk of alcohol misuse, sleep disorders, fast food consumption, and the occurrence of obesity.Considering the shortage of standardized tools to measure burnout among medical workers, we aimed to adapt to the Ukrainian context one of the research tools: Maslach Burnout Inventory for Medical Personnel (MBI-HSS (MP)). The MBI-HSS (MP) addresses three scales: emotional exhaustion (EE) measures feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one’s work; depersonalization (DP) measures an unfeeling and impersonal response toward patients; personal accomplishment (PA) measures feelings of competence and achievement in one’s work.From November 2020 – April 2021 we conducted semi-structured interviews and questionnaires among HIV care providers (N = 117). The result revealed that 83.7 % of respondents had high emotional exhaustion, and 58.5 % had high depersonalization. But the dimension of personal achievement level was not indicative of burnout in this component: 45.5 % had a high level of personal achievement. Pre-test and piloting of the Ukrainian version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory for Medical Personnel (MBI-HSS (MP)) show the validity of this instrument. In addition, it was found that relationships with colleagues and the management of the healthcare institution were associated with higher rates of burnout among healthcare workers.