Burnout Syndrome among Healthcare Professionals: Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Prevention Strategies
Keywords:
Burnout Syndrome, Healthcare Professionals, Interventional Strategies, Cognitive-Behavioral TherapyAbstract
Introduction:
Several risk factors have been identified that contribute to the development of burnout among healthcare professionals. Long working hours, heavy workload, and insufficient staffing levels have been consistently associated with increased burnout rates. This systematic review aimed to synthesize the existing literature on burnout among healthcare professionals, with a focus on prevalence rates, risk factors, and prevention strategies.
Methods:
We implemented a comprehensive search strategy to identify relevant literature focusing on interventional studies addressing burnout syndrome among healthcare professionals. We included studies that were interventional in nature, conducted among healthcare professionals, and directly addressing burnout syndrome. These studies had to present clear outcomes related to the prevalence, risk factors, or effectiveness of prevention strategies for burnout. Excluded were non-interventional studies, such as observational or cross-sectional studies, reviews, commentaries, and studies not focused explicitly on healthcare professionals. Studies not written in English or those lacking peer-review were also excluded.
Results:
Our systematic review analyzed nine interventional studies on burnout syndrome among healthcare professionals, revealing a wide range in intervention types, study designs, and sample sizes (ranging from 21 to 999 participants). These interventions, including mindfulness-based practices, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), resilience training, workload management, and digital stress management tools, demonstrated varying degrees of effectiveness in reducing burnout symptoms.
Conclusions:
The results highlighted that while interventions like CBT and workload management were generally more effective, the overall impact of different strategies varied significantly depending on the nature of the intervention, the healthcare setting, and participant characteristics, emphasizing the need for context-specific approaches in addressing burnout.
