Job Burnout among Employees and Therapists in Counseling Centers for Behavioral Diseases in Iran

Job burnout is more frequent in stressful and high-risk jobs. Healthcare workers, especially Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) workers and therapists, are more exposed to job burnout. This study aimed to compare the burnout rate among the staff and therapists working in behavioral disease counseling centers and health centers in 9 provinces of Iran.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 9 provinces of Iran from January 2020 to March 2020. For this research, 94 VCT workers as the experimental group, and 103 public clinic workers participated as the available sampling group. To collect the data, the Meslesh questionnaire was used and descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, etc.) and inferential methods were applied for statistical analysis (t-test, one-way analysis of variance and Tukey post hoc test, chi - square test and Spearman correlation test). (P< 0.05)

Our finding showed that 33% of health center workers and 32% of VCT workers had burnout, but the difference was not statistically significant. Most Health Center (HC) workers who showed burnout were working in the southern province of Iran (Bushehr and Bandar Abbas), and the most VCT workers who showed burnout were working in the western province of Iran (Kermanshah and Kurdistan).

Although the rate of burnout in the staff of these two centers is very similar, it can be concluded that due to the small number of people referred to AIDS centers compared to the large number of patients in health centers, working with people with HIV/AIDS is so difficult.