The Influence of Personality, Alexithymia and Work Engagement on Burnout among Village Doctors in China: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: In China, grass-roots village doctors, as the gatekeepers of rural residents' health, play an important role in guaranteeing and serving the health level of rural residents. However, the serious burnout and high turnover rate of village doctors threaten the stability of village medical teams. This research evaluated the influence of personality, alexithymia and work engagement on the burnout of village doctors in an in-depth and detailed way, and explored the mediating role of work engagement and alexithymia between personality and the burnout of village doctors in China.Methods: During May and June 2019, 2,684 rural doctors in 1,345 rural clinics in Jining city, Shandong Province, were studied using a quantitative study self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included demographic and sociological characteristics, personality, alexithymia, work engagement and burnout, and was measured by 5-7 Likert scale. One-way ANOVA, Person correlation analysis, and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were used for statistical analysis.Results: Up to 54.3% of the surveyed rural doctors showed moderate to severe emotional exhaustion, 90.5% of them had moderate to severe sense of low personal achievement and 33.9% of them had moderate to severe depersonalization burnout. Personality has a direct positive effect on work engagement (β=0.50, p<0.001), but has a direct negative effect on alexithymia (β=-0.52, p<0.001) and burnout (β=-0.50, p<0.001) respectively. Work engagement has a direct negative effect on burnout (β=-0.10, p<0.001), while alexithymia has a direct positive effect on burnout (β=0.16, p<0.001). In the path between personality and burnout, both work engagement, 95%CI:(−0.17)–(−0.08), and alexithymia 95%CI:(−0.36)–(−0.09), have significant mediating effects.The above results strongly confirmed that personality, alexithymia, and work engagement were early, powerful predicators of burnout.Conclusion: According to the results, medical administrators should pay attention to the personality characteristics of village doctors in their professional training, practice selection and job assignment and encourage doctors to actively reflect on their own personality and to reduce job burnout by obtaining necessary social support, constructing reasonably achievable career expectations, improving time management and participating in psychological counselling programs.

The effect of WeChat-based training on improving the knowledge of tuberculosis management of rural doctors

“…Recruiting medical students with undergraduate or graduate degree to rural areas to be rural doctors might be an important step to fill in the gap. While the fact is, it is difficult to attract new blood to work in rural areas due to identity recognition, career development and low income [8] . Therefore, for most rural doctors with lower education level, apart from routine in-service trainings, instant training that had good feasibility and accessibility and was not subject to venue and time constraint needs to be enhanced.…”

“…It has been reported that 62.6% of Chinese rural doctors had contacted with suspected pulmonary TB patients [8] . Although rural doctors are front-line healthcare providers in rural areas and play a crucial responsibility in TB case referral and management, their knowledge on TB control is relatively poor due to lacking sufficient practitioner training [5] , [7] , [9] .…”

The Effect of Wechat-Based Training on Improving the Village Doctors’ Knowledge of Tuberculosis Management: A Pre-And-Post Intervention Study from China

“…Recruiting medical students with undergraduate or graduate degree to rural areas to be a village doctors might be an important step to ll in the gap. While the fact is, it is di cult to attract new blood to work in rural areas due to identity recognition, career development and low income [8]. Therefore, for most village doctors with lower education level, apart from routine inservice trainings, instant training that had good feasibility and accessibility and was not subjects to venue and time constraint needs to be enhanced.…”

“…It has been reported that 62.6% of Chinese village doctors had contact with suspected pulmonary TB patients [8]. Although village doctors are front-line healthcare providers in rural areas and play a crucial responsibility in TB case referral and management, their knowledge and awareness on TB control is relatively poor due to lacking su cient training during work [5,7,9].…”