Determining the Change of Physician Burnout During COVID-19 and Exploring Its Contributing Factors

Based on the Empirical Study in 5 Hospitals of Suzhou, China

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220105.195How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Burnout; Emotional Exhaustion; Alteration; COVID-19; Suzhou; China

Abstract

Countless previous studies have manifested the negative consequences of physician burnout and its relating causes. However, the recent occurring pandemic, COVID-19, might change the whole picture for the problem. While hypothesizing that physician burnout changes before and after the pandemic and gender might play a role in such alteration, this study aimed to first explore changes of physician burnout during the pandemic and then identify contributing factors of such changes in Suzhou, a first tier city in China. Through an online survey to 1604 physicians at 5 hospitals locally, this research collected 790 effective responses (49.25% response rate). The survey delivered included two section: the revised version of Maslach burnout inventory (MBI) to test score changes before and after the pandemic for physicians and additional questions to determine possible factors that cause the alteration of physician burnout. Based on differences of the two sections, this study decided to perform quantitative analysis for the first section, mainly using pair-t test, Bowker test, multiple linear and logistic regression model, and qualitative analysis for the second one. The final results was basically consistent to the initial hypothesis. The results showed: overall, physician burnout increased during the pandemic; before and after the pandemic, gender and age were significantly associated with emotional exhaustion levels after COVID-19 after adjusting for other confounding factors. (before: gender (p<0.0001), age (p= 0.0096); after: gender (p<0.0001), age (p=0.0018)) Specifically, this study discovered that male doctors aged from 30-49 experienced the most aggravation of symptoms in emotion exhaustion.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Qiushi Dai
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/01/17
TI  - Determining the Change of Physician Burnout During COVID-19 and Exploring Its Contributing Factors
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Social Development and Media Communication (SDMC 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1053
EP  - 1064
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220105.195
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220105.195
ID  - Dai2022
ER  -