THE PROFESSIONAL BURNOUT OF PHYSICIANS OF VARIOUS SPECIALTIES

Abstract

Introduction. The professional burnout is a prevalent phenomenon among physicians confirmed by data of a number of foreign studies. The3 development of professional burnout correlates with rate of medical mistakes and outflow of personnel from the field. At that, there is no studies related to searching of differences in development of professional burnout in various medical specialists which is required for detailed planning of measures on decreasing of prevalence of the mentioned syndrome. Material and methods. The questionnaire MBI (Maslach burnout Inventory) was applied for assessing the level of burnout. a number of originally developed questions was added to establish intensity of labor of physicians. all physicians were stratified on four groups according the profile of specialty (therapeutic, surgical, diagnostic and organizational methodological profiles). Results. The study covered sampling of 1,668 physicians. The obtained data permitted to establish differences in their labor activities and level of professional burnout as related to particular specialties, including urban/rural characteristics. The maximal intensity of labor was specific for physicians of surgical profile. The minimal intensity of labor was established for physicians of organizational methodological profile. The physicians of therapeutic profile were characterized by average level of professional burnout. The symptoms of professional burnout were characteristic for all groups of specialties. At that, 1/5 of all physicians had a low degree of this syndrome. The level of professional burnout in physicians of therapeutic profile in rural area were higher than in urban area by all parameters. The level of professional burnout in surgeons differed at the expense of depersonalization independently of place of employment. Discussion. The obtained data permits to reliably judge about necessity of development of preventive measures with consideration for differences in development of professional burnout in representatives of various medical professions and dictates necessity of further investigation of factors of development of professional burnout in medical specialists.