The Relationship between Emotional Burnout and the Quality of Life of Psychiatrists

Abstract

Background: effective and safe provision of medical care depends on the well-being of medical workers – problems related to health and quality of life do not allow the clinician to realize his potential fully. A high level of work stress undermines the well-being of medical personnel. One of its most characteristic manifestations is burnout.The aim was to study the relationship between burnout and quality of life with the construction of a mathematical model for prediction of the quality of life based on information about the degree of psychiatrists’ burnout.The main hypothesis of this study was that burnout significantly and negatively affects the quality of life.Participants and methods: 82 psychiatrists, working in Moscow psychiatric clinics, independently filled out the Maslach Burnout Inventory and an abbreviated version of the WHO questionnaire «Quality of Life» (WHOQOL-BREF). The multiple linear regression was used to assess the impact of burnout on the quality of life of physicians. The values of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the age, and gender of the respondents were used as predictors; the response variables were the values of WHOQOL-BREF.Results: the value of the domain «emotional exhaustion» is negatively associated with the four dimensions of the WHOQOL-BREF such as «physical health», «psychological health», «social relationships», «environment». The domain «personal accomplishment» positively correlated with respondents’ physical and psychological health. Age affected these indicators negatively but did not affect social relationships and health in the «environment» subscale. The gender of psychiatrists did not have a significant impact on their quality of life. The adjusted coefficient of determination of the models was in the range from 0.1907 to 0.511.Conclusions: еmotional burnout negatively affects the quality of life of practicing psychiatrists. Prospective, longitudinal studies are still needed to establish causal connections between these constructs.