COVID-19 Stress and Burnout: An Investigation of Healthcare Providers

Abstract

The outbreak of the contagion corona virus disease has engrossed worldwide attention. The nature of the disease and its spread has put excessive burden on service providers leading to burn out. In the face of health threats and work pressure during pandemic, the current study aimed to investigate the impact of COVID-19 stress on Burnout among health care providers. Following a convenient sampling technique, a sample of 153 healthcare providers with an age ranged from 24 to 60 years were assessed with COVID Stress Scale (Taylor, et al., 2020) and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach et al., 1997). SPSS 21 was used for statistical analysis of data. Findings revealed that Sub-Scales of COVID stress collectively explained 48% of variance in predicting emotional exhaustion and 39% variance in producing depersonalization among healthcare providers. However, COVID stress negatively predicted personal accomplishment among healthcare providers. Moreover, t-test revealed that female healthcare providers showed higher level of COVID stress i.e. danger, socio-economic consequence, xenophobia and compulsive checking as compared to males while non-significant gender differences were observed for contamination and traumatic stress. The study also found a higher level of personal accomplishment among male healthcare providers whereas female healthcare providers demonstrated higher level of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in comparison to male health care providers.