High prevalence of burnout syndrome among medical and nonmedical residents during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 17; no. 11
• Main Authors: Rebeca da Nóbrega Lucena Pinho, Thais Ferreira Costa, Nayane Miranda Silva, Adriana Ferreira Barros-Areal, André de Matos Salles, Andrea Pedrosa Ribeiro Alves Oliveira, Carlos Henrique Reis Esselin Rassi, Ciro Martins Gomes, Dayde Lane Mendonça da Silva, Fernando Araújo Rodrigues de Oliveira, Isadora Jochims, Ivan Henrique Ranulfo Vaz Filho, Lucas Alves de Brito Oliveira, Marta Alves Rosal, Marta Pinheiro Lima, Mayra Veloso Ayrimoraes Soares, Patricia Shu Kurizky, Viviane Cristina Uliana Peterle, Ana Paula Monteiro Gomides, Licia Maria Henrique da Mota, Cleandro Pires de Albuquerque, Cezar Kozak Simaan, Veronica Moreira Amado
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 01.01.2022
• ISSN: 1932-6203

Background Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, health professionals have been working under extreme conditions, increasing the risk of physical and mental illness. We evaluated the prevalence of burnout and its associated factors among postgraduate student residents in health professions during the global health crisis. Methods Healthcare residents were recruited from all across Brazil between July and September 2020 through digital forms containing instruments for assessing burnout (Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI)), resilience (brief resilient coping scale (BRCS)) and anxiety, stress and depression (depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)). Additionally, the relationships between burnout and chronic diseases, autonomy and educational adequacy in the residency programme, personal protective equipment (PPE), workload and care for patients with COVID-19 were evaluated. The chi-square test, Student’s t test, Pearson’s correlation test and logistic regression were performed. Results A total of 1,313 participants were included: mean (standard deviation) age, 27.8 (4.4) years; female gender, 78.1%; white race, 59.3%; and physicians, 51.3%. The overall prevalence of burnout was 33.4%. The odds (odds ratio [95% confidence interval]) of burnout were higher in the presence of pre-existing diseases (1.76 [1.26–2.47]) and weekly work > 60 h (1.36 [1.03–1.79]) and were lower in the presence of high resilience (0.84 [0.81–0.88]), autonomy (0.87 [0.81–0.93]), and educational structure (0.77 [0.73–0.82]), adequate availability of PPE (0.72 [0.63–0.83]) and non-white race (0.63 [0.47–0.83]). Burnout was correlated with anxiety (r = 0.47; p < 0.05), stress (r: 0.58; p < 0.05) and depression (r: 0.65; p < 0.05). Conclusions We observed a high prevalence of burnout among residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual characteristics and conditions related to the work environment were associated with a higher or lower occurrence of the syndrome.