Investigation of Job Burnout and Its Related Factors in Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical Staff

Job burnout is the result of occupational stress mismanagement. Pre-hospital emergency staff usually experience significant job stress because they are the first to provide emergency care to the patients. The purpose of this study was to determine the levels of job burnout and its associated factors among the pre-hospital emergency staff of urban and road emergency bases in Golestan province. This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 264 eligible emergency department staff who were selected based on a census sampling from emergency centers in Golestan Province during 2016. Data were collected using the Maslach Burnout Questionnaire and scored based on a Likert-type scale. The data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 18) through descriptive and inferential statistics, the Pearson correlation coefficient, the t-test, the Tukey-test, and one-way analysis of variance. P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. According to the obtained results, the age range of the majority of samples were 25-29 years with the mean working experience of 8 years. Moreover, 46% of the staffs were contractors and 63% of them had associate degrees. In addition, 23.4%, 52.2% and 24.5% of the subjects had severe, moderate, and low levels of job burnout, respectively. In terms of frequency, the highest to lowest burn out level mean scores based on 100 were obtained regarding emotional exhaustion (35/38), depersonalization disorder (35/56), and personal incompetence (06/29). Furthermore, the mean and standard deviation of job burnout  regarding emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal incompetence were determined to be 20.71 ± 7.66, 10.67 ± 3.61,and 13.95 ± 10.56, respectively. With respect to the normative data, all dimensions of job burnout were categorized into the moderate group. There was a significant difference between the degree of personal incompetence and the level of education (P = 0.028). The awareness and way of regarding job burnout are of great importance in policymaking to reduce the amount of staff displacement and leaving as well as improve their productivity.