Degree Of burnout and its association with depression, anxiety and stress among health care workers in a tertiary hospital in Mandaue City during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Background@#On top of adjusting to the societal shifts and emotional stressors faced by everyone, health care workers are also confronted by stressors such as an increased risk of exposure, extreme workloads, moral dilemmas, and a dynamic practice environment that differs greatly from what was familiar. These can lead to burnout, a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that results from long-term involvement in work situations that are emotionally demanding. @*General Objective@#This is a descriptive cross-sectional study that intends to measure the degree of burnout and determine its association with depression, anxiety, and stress among health care workers in Chong Hua Hospital Mandaue during the COVID-19 pandemic. @*Methodology@#The data collection process entailed the researchers’ physical and online administration of a questionnaire which included the health care workers’ socio-demographic data and questions lifted from both the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) and Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scales (DASS) 42-item. Also included was an open-ended questionnaire to enumerate outbreak-specific contributors to burnout. @*Results@#222 health care workers were surveyed. Almost half (98, 44.2%) of the health care workers registered moderate to high overall burnout scores on the CBI but none of them had severe burnout. The degree of burnout was determined to be moderately associated with all three negative emotional states using the Cramer’s V coefficient depression (V = .448), anxiety (V = .378), and stress (V = .415). The foremost factor identified to be a contributor to burnout was the high workload which was exacerbated by the onset of the pandemic. @*Conclusion@#The study showed that burnout and the negative psychological states of depression, anxiety, and stress, are prevalent in health care providers with results comparable to other global studies. The contributors to burnout identified by the respondents were either present pre-pandemic but were aggravated by it and those which were outbreak-specific.