Prevalence and Factors of Burnout among Healthcare Workers in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Introduction: The word "Burnout" comes from the term "engine failure". In the 1970s Herbert Freudenberger introduced "burnout" to describe severe emotional stress of the general workforce. The symptoms of burnout could include fatigue, disappointment, anger, negligence, lack of motivation and a sense of ineffectiveness. Method: This study aimed to measure the prevalence of burnout among healthcare workers in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and to determine the factors associated with burnout levels. To attain this, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used together with the demographic variables and factors of burnout of a pilot study of 16 participants. The MBI was distributed online and convenient sampling technique was used to measure burnout through three subscales: exhaustion, professional efficacy and cynicism. Results: 402 healthcare workers participated. Burnout shows high percentages in the three subscales: Exhaustion 269 (67%), Professional Efficacy 61 (15%) and Cynicism 241 (60%). There is no strong relationship between the burnout and the characteristic of participants. The factors that show significant statistical difference are: gender, educational level, break time and work-life balance. However, the variables were not significant for all subscales. Conclusion: Several studies established strong links between work and burnout with additional factors linked to it. This study shows that there are high percentages of burnout among healthcare workers specifically within the three subscales. Although, most studies do not consider healthcare administrators, they were included here and they also showed high levels of burnout. The current COVID-19 pandemic also had an impact on the result of this study.