Clinical research and burnout syndrome in Italy \u2013 only a physicians\u2019 affair?

Celeste Cagnazzo,Roberto Filippi,Giulia Zucchetti,Stefano Stabile,Manuela Monti,Cristiana Taverniti,Rosita Cenna,Franca Fagioli,Sara Pirondi,Agata Sue Ellen Guarrera,Irene Federici,Sara Testoni

doi:10.1186/s13063-021-05158-z

Abstract

BackgroundThe burnout phenomenon has been extensively investigated among health care professionals, particularly focusing on physicians and nurses. However, literature concerning burnout in clinical research is poor and often neglects the other professional categories involved.MethodsIn March 2019, all members of Italian Group of Clinical Research Coordinator were invited to participate to a web survey, consisting of three sections: general information and workload; Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) test; subjective perception of oneself’s work stress and possible causes.ResultsThe majority of respondents felt a form of distress. The main source was contract type (31.2%), followed by workload (20.5%) and lack of skills recognition (17.8%).Results from MBI test confirmed the interviewees’ subjective perception: an intermediate level of emotional exhaustion (19.1 points) and a very high sense of reduced professional achievement (26.8 points) were observed. Both depersonalization and sense of reduced professional achievement showed weak to moderate correlations with emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion was associated with contract type with high significance.ConclusionIt is necessary to act on those qualitative factors that are greatly increasing the level of perceived stress, jeopardizing the quality of clinical research coordinators work and significantly amplifying the phenomenon of migration towards the private sector.

Highlights

The burnout phenomenon has been extensively investigated among health care professionals, focusing on physicians and nurses
Depersonalization and sense of reduced professional achievement did not differ according to job duration
Depersonalization scores were higher among interviewees working in the private sector (5.7 vs 3.6 among those working in public sector, p = 0.048), and higher scores in the sense of reduced professional achievement were self-attributed by interviewees working in hospitals (28.3 vs 23.4 by those working in research centers, p = 0.033) (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

The burnout phenomenon has been extensively investigated among health care professionals, focusing on physicians and nurses. There is no standard definition of burnout, but, currently, the most accepted and widespread is the one given by Maslach and Jackson, describing burnout as a tridimensional psychological syndrome, in which professionals who provide human services display emotional exhaustion, depersonalization in client attention and feelings of low personal accomplishment. The first burnout dimension is the emotional exhaustion, which refers to stress feelings as depression, hopelessness, anger, loneliness, irritability, impatience, tension, decreased empathy, a sense of lack of energy, and worry. The feeling of low professional achievement or low job satisfaction (third dimension) can be described as the awareness that very little has been attained and what is accomplished is worthless [2, 3]

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Discussion

Conclusion