ABSTRACT
The contemporary world with its various challenges has brought about a lot of suffering for the people worldwide. One of the recent and gravest examples of this is the suffering induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. This suffering is further aggravated due to our overemphasis on logic and rationality and relegating emotions to the background. This has led to ignoring emotions and their crucial role in our life. In addition, there is a faulty categorization of emotions into positive and negative and giving utmost importance to positive emotions and neglecting negative emotions. The overemphasis on positive emotions is one of the key features of the movement of positive psychology as well as one of its most scathing criticisms. The construct of emotional intelligence has renewed interest in emotions and their crucial role in our life. Emotional intelligence with its emphasis on understanding and managing emotions can play a significant role in dealing with suffering, especially suffering brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered our life. Doctors more so than the general public because of their involvement in managing the COVID-infected individuals, some of them 24/7 end in burnout. Burnout in doctors can lead to reduced care of patients, increased medical errors, and poor health. Burnout among frontline health-care workers has become a major problem in this ongoing epidemic. On the other hand, doctors in preclinical department have a lack of interaction with patients, with not much nonclinical professional work to boot, find the profession less gratifying which perhaps increase their stress level. AIM: The aim was to study the prevalence of burnout and measure resilience in doctors in clinical and in preclinical departments. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This observational, cross-sectional, comparative study was carried out in a tertiary care teaching hospital and COVID care center. By purposive sampling 60 preclinical and 60 clinical doctors in a tertiary health care center were included in the study. After obtaining the Institutional Ethics Committee approval and informed consent, the doctors were administered a self made socio-demographic questionnaire, the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. Doctors were given a self-made questionnaire, the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. RESULTS: The prevalence of burnout was seen more in clinical doctors (55.47) and the resilience was observed more in preclinical doctors (88.9). DISCUSSION: Resident doctors are a major force to combat COVID-19 as frontline health workers; hence, one can visualize burnout amongst them. On an individual basis, the work-related burnout was severely high in the clinical group owing to the workload which has been corresponding to a number of western studies. Nonclinical department doctors from pathology, community medicine, and microbiology did show burnout but showed a greater score in resilience. Psychological resilience has been identified as a component in preventing burnout. CONCLUSION: Therapy sessions can be used in clinical doctors facing burnout to build up their resilience.