LETTER TO THE EDITOR

https://doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-10071-24507 Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine Volume 27 | Issue 10 | Year 2023

Job Satisfaction and Occupational Burnout among Healthcare Professionals during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-method Approach

---

Vikram Singh Chouhanhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8643-2618

Humanities and Social Sciences, Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology, Guna, Madhya Pradesh, India

Corresponding Author: Vikram Singh Chouhan, Humanities and Social Sciences, Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology, Guna, Madhya Pradesh, India, Phone: +91 8120737773, e-mail: vikram443322@rediffmail.com

How to cite this article: Chouhan VS. Job Satisfaction and Occupational Burnout among Healthcare Professionals during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-method Approach. Indian J Crit Care Med 2023;27(10):776–777.

Source of support: Nil

Conflict of interest: None

Keywords: COVID-19, Healthcare professionals, Job satisfaction, Occupational burnout.

Dear Editor,

The healthcare system in the last 1 year has been disintegrated worldwide since the commencement of the epidemic. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are crucial within the healthcare system because they are the frontiers of the cure for patients in times of epidemic. Due to the workload increase, HCPs experienced enormous emotional strain. Around 30–50% of HCPs have suffered from occupational burnout.¹ Approximately, 76% of physicians reported occupational burnout during the crisis, while nurses possessed modest to higher levels of burnout,² thus revealing a higher degree of burnout and creating a major hazard to the safety of patients and the quality of healthcare.³

The study employed a mixed-method approach to measure the job satisfaction and occupational burnout among HCPs. Questionnaire-based surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. The survey questionnaire was sent to HCPs through e-mails as well as social media. Voluntary participation was sought, and participants have given informed consent electronically. Regression was used to recognize the risk factors for burnout. For data acquisition, 658 HCPs were approached. A total of 402 HCPs (148 physicians and 254 nurses) participated in the survey. Telephonic interviews were conducted for the qualitative analysis on a sample of 29 (12 Physicians and 17 nurses) (Tables 1 to 5).

The study findings revealed a significant increase in burnout among HCPs caused by COVID-19 crisis as the prevalence of occupational burnout was 61.4%. Job satisfaction was found to be an important predictor of burnout. Several factors related positively to burnout, such as female nurses, extra workload, doing night shifts, and insufficient access to PPE kits. Job satisfaction was negatively related to burnout.

The findings of the study established several major themes emerging from the respondents’ statements. The primary common feature of the respondents’ responses was that majority of them distinctly articulated occupational burnout syndromes during the pandemic. The findings of the study revealed that they experienced symptoms of lower levels of occupational burnout pre-COVID-19, and COVID-19 considerably deteriorated their occupational burnout. The third common theme was a negative cause and effect association of job satisfaction on burnout with higher job satisfaction causing lower burnout. Another theme that emerged was respondents’ expression of a comparatively harmonized mixture of definite components of job satisfaction (working conditions, responsibility, pay). Even though no burnout symptom was included as a criterion for taking part in the interviews, all participants evidently expressed their diverse syndromes: physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. All participants expressed that burnout enhanced drastically during the COVID-19 crisis because of massive enlargement in accountability since they were accountable for the safety of their own and others including colleagues, patients, and residents. They had higher workload levels exerting a considerable burden on their psychological health, thus experiencing anxiety and fear concerning their occupation. This might be a cause of HCPs’ psychological fatigue; consequently, making them more susceptible to develop burnout syndrome.

The study portrays a call for reforming long-term care in healthcare services to prevent burnout of HCPs; hence, the results of the study are expected to assist decision-makers and policy-makers in the healthcare sector with a complete overview of essential aspects of burnout and job satisfaction of HCPs.

ORCID

Vikram Singh Chouhan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8643-2618

REFERENCES

1. White EM, Aiken LH, McHugh MD. Registered nurse burnout, job dissatisfaction, and missed care in nursing homes. J Amer Geriatr Soc 2019;67(10):2065–2071. DOI: 10.1111/jgs.16051.

2. Dimitriu MCT, Pantea-Stoian A, Smaranda AC, Nica AA, Carap AC, Constantin VD, et al. Burnout syndrome in Romanian medical residents in time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Med Hypotheses 2020;144:109972. DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109972.

3. Choi KR, Skrine JK, Logsdon MC. Nursing and the novel coronavirus: risks and responsibilities in a global outbreak. J Adv Nurs 2020;23:1–2. DOI: 10.1111/jan.14369.

________________________
© The Author(s). 2023 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and non-commercial reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.