Burnout among Dentists in Riyadh City, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Author(s): Rayan AbdulhakeemWaznah*, Navin Anand Ingle and Mohammad Abdul Baseer
Abstract
Introduction: Physical and mental health of a health care professional is of utmost important. Health care professional student during their course of the study will go through different stages of academic and clinical tasks which may sum up to bouts of stress and are difficult to cope up leading to a visibly invisible disease called “burnt out syndrome”. The aim of the present study was to assess the degree of burnout among dentists by age, gender, years of working experience, type of job, and professional qualification.
Methods: This cross-sectional survey used the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) on 132 dental professionals to assess the level of burnout. The OLBI which assesses burnout on two dimensions: exhaustion and disengagement domains were distributed to general dental practitioners, specialists, and consultants working in the both public and private sectors. Data was analyzed using the SPSS IBM software version 23.
Results: General dentist are more likely to exhibit the highest levels of burnout, although all dentists had much higher levels than those reported in the literature (p = 0.004). Females showed statistically significantly higher levels of burnout than males in both disengagement and exhaustion domains, with p value being lesser than 0.001. A statistically significant negative correlation was found between burnout scores and age and years of working experience of the respondents suggesting that burnout score decreased with increase in age and years of working experience.
Conclusion: The general dentist and female gender showed higher levels of burnout in both disengagement and exhaustion domains.