Evaluation of Burnout among Medical Officers and Dental Surgeons in State Health Services using Maslach's Burnout Inventory during COVID-19: A Cross Sectional Study.

Introduction: The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic became a worldwide public health crisis. It leads to raised levels of burnout and anxiety among the people of the medical and dental fraternity, especially those involved in various duties related to COVID-19. The present research focused on evaluating the prevalence and predictors of burnout among medical officers and dental surgeons in Haryana's state dental health services.

Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess burnout among medical officers and dental surgeons involved in COVID-19-related duties in state health services. Maslach's burnout scale was used to evaluate burnout. It is a prevalidated and self-administered questionnaire with three domains, that is, emotional exhaustion (EE), personal accomplishment (PA) assessment, and depersonalization (DP). The Chi square test, Student's t test (unpaired), and analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc analysis were done wherever applicable. Pearson's correlation analysis was used to check the relationship among EE, DP, and PA.

Results: A total of 200 study participants responded to the online survey. Nearly half of them (51%) were aged 25-34 years. The majority had service experience of up to 20 years (90%). Almost three-fourths (72%) of study participants performed duties for >8 h a day. Up to 86% reported that the second wave of COVID-19 caused increased burnout. Moderate-to-high degrees of occupational exhaustion (OE) and DP were reported among approximately 42% of study participants. Medical officers were reported to have statistically significantly higher levels of burnout compared to dental surgeons (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: Moderate levels of burnout were reported among half of the study participants, suggestive of the need to address the issues related to mental health of healthcare providers.