Assessment of Physician Burnout and its Association with Musculoskeletal Disorder

Abstract

Objective: To assess burnout among doctors and to determine its association with a musculoskeletal disorder.

Study Design: Cross sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: Government and Private Hospitals of Islamabad and Rawalpindi Pakistan, from Jun to Aug 2020.

Methodology: Two hundred and forty doctors were included through two-stage cluster sampling from different departments of the selected hospitals. Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used to assess burnout. Second, Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ) was used to assess the musculoskeletal disorder.

Results: There were one hundred thirty-five males and one hundred and five females participants with an average age of 31.64±6.21 years. There was an association between burnout, and Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) assessed through "Depersonalization" and "Personal Achievement" components with p-values of 0.005 and 0.017. In contrast, burnout assessed through the Emotional Exhaustion (EE) component was not associated with Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) and had a pvalue of 0.817. The logistic regression analysis showed that marital status, age and burnout assessment through depersonalization were significant confounders for musculoskeletal disorders.

Conclusion: Musculoskeletal disorder is related to the presence of burnout assessed through depersonalization. Nearly half of the doctors had at least one component of burnout.