Job burnout in clinicians: current status and related factors

Abstract

Objective To survey the current status and analyze the influencing mechanism of job burnout in clinicians. Methods We distributed Doctor-patient Relationship Scale, Doctor's Professional Identity Scale and Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) to 550 clinicians in 3 general hospitals in Chongqing, and received 529 valid responses. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the relationship between the variables. Results Gender, age, departments, and working hours per week were all significantly associated with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low sense of achievement among the clinicians (P < 0.05). The doctor-patient relationship from the perspective of clinicians had a significant negative correlation with the dimension scores (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low sense of achievement) of job burnout; professional recognition was negatively correlated with job burnout in all dimensions and positively with the doctor-patient relationship from the clinicians' perspective. Professional recognition was a mediator of doctor-patient relationship and low sense of achievement, which was also verified by the test of complete mediator effect. The indirect effect of professional recognition as a complete intermediary variable was -0.12 on low sense of achievement (RMSEA=0.08, NFI=0.92, CFI=0.94, χ2/df=4.37). Conclusion Professional recognition is a partial intermediary variable between doctor-patient relationship, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and is a complete mediator variable between doctor-patient relationship and low sense of achievement among the clinicians. The doctor-patient relationship is the fundamental source of low professional recognition and low sense of achievement.

Keywords

• doctor-patient relationship
• professional recognition
• job burnout
• structural equation model