Background: Burnout syndromeis an occupational mental health problem that affects human service professionals, including physicians, due to chronic job stress. It is a syndrome of three dimensions: high emotional exhaustion (EE), high depersonalization (DP) and reduced personal accomplishment (PA), that can occur among individuals who work with people.
Burnout is quite prevalent in health care professionals especially primary care and family medicine physicians. The consequences of physicians burnout are serious, not only because it reflects personal suffering, but also because burnout threatens the quality of care doctors are expected to deliver
Objective: This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of burnout among Family Physicians working in King Fahad ArmedForces Hospital PHC centers, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and to determine the associated factors potentially contributing to burnout among the study group.
Methodology: A cross-sectional survey of KFAFH Family Physicians was conducted using a self-administered validated questionnaire composed of two parts. The first part included questions about demographic factors, working experience, health, lifestyle and job satisfaction. The second part was Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI).were analyzed in the three dimensions of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP) and personal accomplishment (PA).The SPSS program was used for data entry and analysis. Multiple regression analysis was used to find out the possible predictors of burnout.
Results: Almost 106 questionnaires were distributed, and 101 were returned to give a response rate of 95.2%.Less than half of them (47.5%) were aged < 34 years. The females were (57.4%) and the majority were married(80.2%).Saudi Arabian nationality physicians were 54.5%
In terms of burnout, 75.2% of respondents scored high for EE burnout, 51.5% for DP and 32.7% for PA, with 20% scoring high burnout in all three dimensions. Just 17% of doctors did not score high for burnout in any dimension.
Conclusions: Burnout is present among primary care physicians at a relatively high percentage. This situation is strongly associated with several of the variables under study which are low job satisfaction, smoking, lower years of experience, lower monthly income, uncertification in family medicine, professional and private difficulties, working during weekends and lack of knowledge about job description.