Burnout, compassion satisfaction and fatigue: Is professional quality of life linked with resilience in emergency departments?

Abstract

Background We examined the relationship between resilience and professional quality of life (ProQoL) through specifically developed surveys and identified the correlation with sociodemographic characteristics that may affect both concepts. Methods The study was done among physicians working in different emergency departments. An online questionnaire with 3 parts was used. (i) 10 questions on the demographic characteristics and working conditions of the participating physicians; (ii) The 'Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale' (CDRS), a 10-item scale, which measures the psychological resilience of physicians; and (iii) The 'Professional Quality of Life Scale' (ProQoL scale) a 30-item questionnaire which measures physicians' compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout (BO) and compassion fatigue (CF). Scores for the subscales of ProQoL were categorized as follows: <22 low; 23-41 moderate; and >42 high levels. Results The questionnaire was completed by 290 participants (99.3%). The median age was 30 (26-37) years, and 40.7% (118) of the participants were females. For the BO subscale, the median CDRS score of participants with high BO scores (18 [15-20]) was found to be lower than the median score of participants with low and moderate BO scores (p values 0.013 and 0.009, respectively). For CS subscale, the median scores of all 3 groups were statistically different, and the highest median score belonged to the high group (29 [27-34]) (p<0.001 for all 3 groups). For the CF subscale, the median CDRS score for participants with high CF scores (13 [9-16]) was found to be significantly lower than the CDRS score of participants with low and moderate CF scores (p <0.017 and <0.032, respectively). The median CDRS score of men was significantly higher than that of women (p<0.001). Conclusion The concept of resilience is associated with BO, CS and CF, which constitute ProQoL. Physicians who have high scores for BO and CF, which are negative sub-factors of the ProQoL scale, have lower resilience; on the contrary, those who have high scores for CS, which is a positive indicator of the quality of life, have higher resilience. Female gender can be considered a risk factor for low resilience.