Physician-Specific Symptoms of Burnout Compared to a Non-Physicians Group.

Physician burnout is a systemic problem in health care due to its high prevalence and its negative impact on professional functioning and individual well-being. While unique aspects of the physician role contributing to the development burnout have been investigated recently, it is currently unclear whether burnout manifests differently in physicians compared to the non-physician working population. We conducted an individual symptom analysis of burnout symptoms comparing a large sample of physicians with a non-physician group. In this cross-sectional online study, burnout was assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey. We matched physicians with non-physicians regarding their age, gender, educational level, occupational status, and total burnout level using a "nearest neighbour matching" procedure. We then conducted a series of between-groups comparisons. Data of 3846 (51.0% women) participants including 641 physicians and 3205 non-physicians were analysed. The most pronounced difference was that physicians were more satisfied with their work performance (medium effect size (r = 0.343). Our findings indicate minor yet significant differences in burnout phenomenology between physicians and non-physicians. This demonstrates unique aspects of physician burnout and implies that such differences should be considered in occupational research among physicians, particularly when developing burnout prevention programs for physicians.

Relationship between job burnout and somatic diseases: a network analysis.

Job burnout, characterized by feelings of exhaustion, cynicism and reduced personal efficacy, has been defined as a risk state for the development of diseases, but its association with somatic diseases is underexplored. Study participants were 5671 respondents (mean age 44.1 years, range 18-70; 38.6% men) to an online survey of job burnout, using a mobile health web application. Respondents provided data on sociodemographic characteristics, symptoms of burnout, measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey, depressive symptoms, measured with the Profile of Mood States, and 11 categories of somatic diseases. Adjusting for age, sex, educational level, depressive symptoms, and all disease categories included, network analysis showed a significant association of high exhaustion with "high blood pressure" and a category of "other chronic somatic diseases". Low personal efficacy showed a significant association with "chronic lung diseases". In network analysis, clinically relevant depressive symptoms were also significantly associated with "high blood pressure", "other chronic somatic diseases" and "skin diseases". Logistic regression analysis confirmed these associations. Burnout dimensions were significantly associated with an increased risk for somatic diseases, independently of sociodemographic factors and clinically relevant depressive symptoms. This relationship seems particularly evident for the exhaustion dimension of job burnout.

Risk assessment for job burnout with a mobile health web application using questionnaire data: a proof of concept study.

BACKGROUND: Job burnout has become a rampant epidemic in working societies, causing high productivity loss and healthcare costs. An easy accessible tool to detect clinically relevant risk may bear the potential to timely avert the dire sequelae of burnout. As a start, we performed a proof of concept study to test the utilization of a mobile health web application for a free and anonymous burnout risk assessment with established questionnaires. METHODS: We designed a client-side javascript web application for users who filled out demographic and psychometric data forms over the internet. Users were recruited through social media, back links from hospital websites, and search engine optimization. Similar to population-based studies, we used the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) to calculate a burnout risk index (BRIX). As additional mental health burden indices, users filled out the Perceived Stress Scale, Insomina Severity Index, and Profile of Mood States. RESULTS: Within six months, the MBI-GS was completed by 11,311 users (median age 33 years, 85 % women) of whom 20.0 % had no clinically relevant burnout risk, 54.7 % had mild-to-moderate risk, and 25.3 % had high risk. In the 2947 users completing all questionnaires, female sex (B = -0.03), cohabiting (B = -0.03), negative affect (B = 0.46), positive affect (B = -0.20), perceived stress (B = 0.18), and insomnia symptoms (B = 0.04) explained 56.2 % of the variance in the continuously scaled BRIX. The reliability was good to excellent for all psychometric scales. The weighting of the BRIX with mental health burden indices primarily modified the risk in users with mild-to-moderate burnout risk. CONCLUSIONS: A low-threshold web application can reliably assess the risk of job burnout. As the bulk of users had clinically relevant burnout scores, a web application may be useful to target employees at risk. The clinical value of the BRIX and its modification with coexistent/absent mental health burden awaits evaluation with work and health outcomes.