Prevalence of Burnout among Physicians at King Salman Armed Forces Hospital, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia

Introduction: Physician burnout in armed forces involves emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a sense of declined personal accomplishment. This can have an adverse effect on quality patient care, the healthcare team and can cost physician health in both in-training physicians and practicing physicians. The causative factors include excessive long work shifts, inefficient work systems and clerical burdens, professional home conflicts, lack of departmental support, limited work force and poor leadership culture. Objectives: This study aims at measuring the prevalence of burnout in physicians working in King Salman armed forces hospital Saudi Arabia and studying possible related socio-demographic variables. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted between April and May 2015 among physicians. A self‑administered questionnaire was used that includes questions on socio demographic characteristics, sources of stress and burnout of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) in this study. Student’s T-test and chi square tests were used for analysis. Results: Majority were males 74.8% aged more than 35 years with the prevalence rate of 14.2%. The analyzed variables associated with emotional exhaustion, the following factors significantly affected the EE with P value<0.05, exercise, alternate shift duty, work over load, quality of life, satisfaction with work and specialty. As for the significant factors associated with DP, shift duty, work overload, quality of life perception and specialty were found to have P value less than 0.05. Conclusion: Burnout is prevalent among physicians; we identified variables significantly associated with Emotional exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP) and Personal accomplishment (PA). However, further research is recommended to study other predictors not mentioned in the current study and all health policy makers must work jointly in designing and implement effective remedial measures for physician burnout.