Prevalence of Burnout Syndrome and Its Related Factors Among Dentists in Qom Province, Iran

Occupational burnout is a process of biopsychological fatigue caused by constant and continuous emotional stress due to long-term involvement in humans. Dentistry is one profession with extant biopsychological fatigue that can lead to burnout. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of burnout and related influential factors in dentists in Qom Province, Iran.

This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 158 general and specialist dentists in Qom Province, Iran (2018-2019) who were randomly selected. The instrument for collecting data was Maslach's standard burnout questionnaire and questions about demographic information and occupational factors. The obtained data were analyzed in SPSS using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), t-test, Chi-squared test, and Pearson correlation coefficient.

This study suggested that the burnout score in all studied dentists was moderate in Qom (n=158). It is revealed that 9.1% of subjects had severe emotional exhaustion, 11.4% had severe depersonalization, and 8.2% had severe individual accomplishment loss. The lack of regular exercise, general dentistry, the lack of educational responsibility, job dissatisfaction, conflict in the role, ambiguity in the role, and work overload are the predictors of burnout in dentists in Qom Province, Iran.

The obtained data revealed that although burnout is not a common problem in dentists in Qom Province; however, strategies for coping with it should be evaluated and managed continuously. Further studies are recommended in this field.