Abstract
Burnout has been recognized as a serious health problem. In Portugal, before COVID-19 Pandemic, there were strong indicators of high prevalence of burnout in physicians and nurses. However, the Portuguese Health Care Service was able to efficiently respond to the increased demands. This study intends to understand how psychosocial variables might have been protective factors for burnout in physicians and nurses in Portugal. Specifically, we considered several psychosocial variables that have been found to be protective factors for burnout in previous research and we compared their predictive and unique impact in the prediction of burnout. These variables are perceptions of justice (distributive, procedural, justice from colleagues, justice from patients, and their families), professional identification, meaningful work and empathy. We also included workload, as a risk factor, and controlled other variables that can be confounds for burnout, such as socio-demographic variables, ideological variables (religiosity, political orientation), and specific variables related with COVID-19 pandemic. The sample of the present study is composed by 229 physicians (aged between 23 and 70 years old, M = 36.54; SD = 10.72; 48% male and 52% female) and 268 nurses (aged between 22 and 69 years old, M = 34.96; SD = 9.52; 27% male and 73% female). An online survey was created using Qualtrics and participants were recruited via Facebook and LinkedIn. The data were collected during 29 days (between the 45th and the 74th days after the first diagnosed case of COVID-19 in Portugal). The results showed that workload was a significant risk factor, except for disengagement in physicians. The most consistent protectors across samples were procedural justice (for both dimensions of burnout, both in physicians and nurses) and professional identification (for disengagement, both in physicians and nurses; for exhaustion only in physicians). This study suggests that decreasing workload and promoting procedural justice and professional identification are key factors that might be simultaneously and independently addressed in interventions for reducing the risk of burnout or preventing it from occurring in the first place.
Highlights
IntroductionBurnout has been recognized as a serious health problem and, the high incidence of burnout in physicians (West et al, 2018, for a review) and nurses (Woo et al, 2020, for a review) has been recognized as a threat, to the professionals themselves and to their patients and the organizations in which they work
Burnout has been defined as a psychological syndrome of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy resulting from ongoing occupational stressors (Leiter and Maslach, 2003), and that can take place in any kind of occupation (Leiter and Schaufeli, 1996).Burnout has been recognized as a serious health problem and, the high incidence of burnout in physicians (West et al, 2018, for a review) and nurses (Woo et al, 2020, for a review) has been recognized as a threat, to the professionals themselves and to their patients and the organizations in which they work
Significant negative correlation for exhaustion and disengagement were found with the following variables: income, trust in policies (COVID-19), justice of colleagues, distributive justice, procedural justice, and professional identification
Summary
Burnout has been recognized as a serious health problem and, the high incidence of burnout in physicians (West et al, 2018, for a review) and nurses (Woo et al, 2020, for a review) has been recognized as a threat, to the professionals themselves and to their patients and the organizations in which they work. In a study with a national sample of 9,176 of Portuguese physicians, it was found that 66% of them were in a high level of emotional exhaustion (Vala et al, 2017). In a sample of 1,262 nurses, at a national level, about 50% had a high level of burnout (Marôco et al, 2016)
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