Occupational Burnout Among Frontline Health Professionals in a High-Risk Area During the COVID-19 Outbreak: A Structural Equation Model

Overview

Journal Front Psychiatry

Specialty Psychiatry

Date 2021 Apr 12

PMID 33841197

Citations 16

Authors

Dan Li

Yuanyuan Wang

Hui Yu

Zhizhou Duan

Ke Peng

Nan Wang

Qiang Zhou

Xudong Hu

Ke Fang

Amanda Wilson

Jianjun Ou

Xiaoping Wang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) resulted in a substantial workload and stress for frontline health professionals in high-risk areas. Little research has investigated the mechanism of occupational burnout among the frontline health professionals located in the center of the epidemic in Wuhan, China. A total of 199 frontline health professionals from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital completed the cross-sectional survey. Mechanisms of occupational burnout (according to the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey, MBI-GS) among the health professionals in Jinyintan Hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak were examined using a structural equation model (SEM). The levels of the three burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy) were high at 34.2, 50.8, and 35.2%, respectively. Frontline health professionals in this stressful period reported significantly greater emotional exhaustion ( < 0.001) and job-related cynicism ( < 0.001), but no significant difference in professional efficacy ( = 0.449), when compared to employees in a large multinational company. The SEM results revealed that both acute stress symptoms and psychosomatic symptoms significantly predicted the emotional exhaustion and occupation cynicism dimensions of burnout. The study reveals the occupational burnout mechanism of frontline health professionals during the COVID-19 peak at the time of the outbreak. This study provides an important contribution to understanding the future psychological interventions necessary for frontline health professionals during an epidemic crisis.

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