Abstract
Background: Despite the prevalence of “professsional exhaustion syndrome” or “burnout”, very few intervention programs for healthcare professionals have been proposed, and even fewer have been evaluated. The Catalan Health Institute requested an intervention that would be preventive, integrated, and would differentiate between those affected by burnout and those with established psychopathologic disorders requiring specific treatment. Aims: To describe the experience and initial reflections from the first cohort of primary care physicians in the Barcelona public health system to participate in a program designed to prevent burnout. Methods: Descriptive analysis of the characteristics of this secondary prevention program: design, cost estimates, recruitment and screening, and activities (training, organization, and group techniques). Particular emphasis on the process of identifying potentially affected professionals, how they were offered the opportunity to participate, and the coordinated and confidential nature of the program. Results: Of a target population of 969 family doctors and pediatricians in public primary care services in Barcelona, 6 (0.61%) applied for full program participation. All of them, along with 2 non-medical professionals in primary care services who joined the program, met the clinical and psychometric criteria (Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure, General Health Questionnaire, and the 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire) of the desired participant profile. Conclusions: The level of participation could suggest defects in program design or, alternatively, problems in the concept of burnout. This construct may be more useful for detecting stress attributed to occupational contexts than for facilitating participation in activities related to its prevention or treatment.
Highlights
The use of the metaphorical term of “burnout” has suffered from problems of conceptual boundaries since its introduction by Freudenberger [1], Maslach and Jackson [2]. Attempts to alleviate these problems have proposed diverse alternatives: “professional exhaustion syndrome”, “job burnout”, “work stress” or “professional disillusionment syndrome” are just a few of the more or less synonymous terms applied to a situation that everybody talks about but that is still far from being sufficiently defined
Shirom [3], applying the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, defines burnout as an affective state characterized by feelings of insufficient physical, emotional and cognitive energy: burnout tends to occur when an individual experiences actual or threatened loss of internal or external resources and lacks the resources needed to compensate for that loss
The Barcelona primary care services of the Catalan Health Institute (Institut Català de la Salut, ICS) requested collaboration in designing a programme on burnout from the Occupational Health and Safety Unit (USL) and the ICS team working on the prevention of mental disorders (EAPPP)
Summary
The use of the metaphorical term of “burnout” has suffered from problems of conceptual boundaries since its introduction by Freudenberger [1], Maslach and Jackson [2]. Focal group oriented to reflection about the psychological problems of professionals; specific patient cases are proposed each session by the participants 5 hours 21 hours 18 hours. Aims: To describe the experience and initial reflections from the first cohort of primary care physicians in the Barcelona public health system to participate in a program designed to prevent burnout. Along with 2 non-medical professionals in primary care services who joined the program, met the clinical and psychometric criteria (Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure, General Health Questionnaire, and the 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire) of the desired participant profile. Conclusions: The level of participation could suggest defects in program design or, alternatively, problems in the concept of burnout This construct may be more useful for detecting stress attributed to occupational contexts than for facilitating participation in activities related to its prevention or treatment
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