The effect of primary care physicians' attitudes towards defensive medicine practices and burnout levels on their clinical practices

Introduction: Due to the lawsuits filed against doctors around the world, it is seen that doctors have developed practices to secure themselves, and these new behaviors have come to the forefront with the name "Defensive Medicine" in the USA. "Burnout", which is used for health professionals, is characterized by mental and physical energy deprivation caused by stress related to work conditions that develop in sufficient time. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of defensive medicine practice characteristics and burnout levels of family physicians on their professional practices. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted among family physicians in Turkey. The sample size was calculated by taking the population size between 30-40 thousand, 40% prevalence, 90% confidence interval, 5% margin of error and pattern effect 2.0 and it was aimed to reach a minimum of 516 family physicians. Data collection will be done with a questionnaire consisting of sociodemographic form, defensive medicine clinical practice form, DTTÖ and Maslach Burnout Scale. Findings: In our study, 65.12% of the 542 participants were male and 34.87% were female. The mean score of DTTÖ was 47.94. The mean Maslach Burnout Inventory score of the participants was 79.29. In terms of gender, hearing the concept of defensive medicine before and having sufficient knowledge about the content of the concept of defensive medicine practices were found to be statistically significant. It was found that the Maslach scale score and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization sub-dimension scores of the participants who applied to very high DTU, and the scores of the participants who applied to moderate DTU for personal accomplishment, another sub-dimension of the Maslach Exhaustion Inventory, were statistically significantly higher. Conclusion: A relationship was found between DTU and burnout. These two conditions both affect each other and affect the professional practices of physicians. Prevention of DTU is important in terms of preventing loss of time for patients, relieving the workload of other steps and benefiting the society financially.