Burnout syndrome and depression levels and related factors in turkish radiation oncology residents

Purpose: Burnout is a syndrome which is seen more frequently in occupational groups, having intensive mutual face to face communication like health care professionals, consists of three sub-groups as depersonalization (DP), emotional exhaustion (EE), and a sense of low personal accomplishment. Although it has similar features with depression, the most important discrimination is while depression is caused by all kinds of life events, burnout syndrome (BS) is a condition that is only caused by work-related events. The purpose of this study is to determine the burnout syndrome and depression levels and related factors in Turkish Radiation Oncology (R.O) residents in order to make suggestions for developing a better quality of education and working conditions and environment.Materials and Methods: The inventories and the questionnaire were sent by electronic mail to 78 physicians who were still R.O residents during August-September 2011 in Turkey. The participants were asked to fill out Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to assess the level of depression, Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) for the level of burnout, and 25-item questionnaire of sociodemographic data (SDQ) consisting of information about sociodemographic conditions, health and working environment, the difficult conditions of life, total working years as a physician, occupational problems, the situation of reflecting requests to the administration, having any information about burnout, and the opinion about whether BS could be solved or not. Arithmetic means and standard deviation values of the data, Chi-square test, Krusskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests were performed. İnternal consistency of MBI was estimated and evaluated by Cronbach?s coefficient alpha by using the SPSS 15.0 program. As the number of participants was not sufficient the statistical evaluation could only be performed between "total working years as a physician" and the subgroups of burnout syndrome and ?having junior-senior relationship problems? and DP subgroup of burnout, but not between the data of the other groups of SDQ.Results: The response rate of the questionnaires was 58%. The median age of the participants was 29 (25-39) and the female number was 32 (71%). Twenty-four (53%) of the participants were married and those who had children were 14 (42%) of the entire group. Seventy-eight percent of the group did not smoke and the rate of alcohol intake was 53%.Thirty-four (76%) residents were working in the University clinics, nine (20%) residents were working in the Government Hospitals and two (4%) residents were working in Private Hospitals. Twenty seven (60%) residents were living in big cities (metropolis). Forty (89%) of the residents were working in R.O departments for 2-5 years. Total years worked as a physician was 0-2 years for three (7%) people, 2-5 years for 27 (60%) people, 5-10 years for ten (22%) people and 10-15 years for five (11%) people. Sixty-seven percent of the physicians complained about junior-senior relations, 22% about health problems, 22% about insufficient salaries, 22% about family problems and 17% about problems of security in work and some residents crossed more than one choice. Twenty-six (58%) participants had stated that they had chosen Radiation Oncology by their own will and 41 (91%) residents had stated that they had been working in classical environmental conditions of hospitals. Eighty percent (36) of residents claimed that they had knowledge about BS, 73% (33) of them stated that this problem can be solved. Thirty-one % (14) of the residents were having various levels of mood disorder with 11% (5) of clinical depression levels, respectively. In terms of BS, 49% (22) of the residents had high levels of EE and 36% (16) had intermediate levels. High levels of BS were determined in 12 (27%) residents and intermediate levels in 16 (35%) residents of DP subgroup. Sixty-nine percent (31) of the respondents had high and 18% (8) had intermediate levels of burnout in terms of PA. According to the data of SDQ, the relation between family problems and BDI had showed borderline significance (p = 0.049); on the other hand relation between the working years of a physician and DP showed statistically significant corralation (p = 0.014), this ment that DP decreased as the years passed by. The relation between junior-senior relationship problems and DP did not show statistically significant relationship (p = 0.31). In addition, the relation between the age and DP was at high level and negative direction (r = -0.29, p = 0.046), and the correlation between EE and DP with BDI score showed high levels (r = 0.40, p = 0.006; r 0.42, p = 0.004).Conclusion: Burnout syndrome is a condition which causes problems in an individual?s physical, psychological, and social life and besides it causes decrease in service quality and patient satisfaction and also a loss of income, so it is important that BS should be given priority in terms of business. To make certain comments, more comprehensive studies are needed, but in light of our results, which in fact represents more than half of the entire group, burnout syndrome was found to be an important problem among radiation oncology residents; to overcome the causes and ensure a better quality of education and working environment, it is thought that regulations and changes should be made in individual, institutional and national health policies.Keywords: Burnout, depression, radiation oncology, physician