page 1 of 10 ISSN:xxxx-xxxx SFJEM, an open access journal
Volume 1 · Issue 1 · 1000002 SF J Emer Med
Research Article Open Access
Publishers
SCIFED
SciFed Journal of Emergency Medicine
Basis F, SF J Emer Med, 2017, 1:1
Burnout among Nurses and Physicians in the Emergency Department: a
Comparison Study
1
Givon D,
*2
Basis F
1
Department of Emergency Medicine Rambam Health Care Campus Haifa, Israel
*2
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology- Faculty of Medicine, Israel
Keywords
Burnout; Medical staff; Emergency department;
Violence
Running Head Burnout among medical staff
Introduction
According to Holt, occupational stress is composed
of: “those factors that have the potential to be harmful to
the employee” [1].
One of the undesired results of persistent stress
is the “Burnout Syndrome”. The burnout syndrome
includes a complex of physical and emotional symptoms,
like: chronic fatigue, sleep disturbances, long lasting
common colds, depression, hopelessness, and negative
attitude toward the work system and life in general [2].
These negative feelings can lead to conflicts between the
employees and their managers.
*Corresponding author: Basis F, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology-
Faculty of Medicine, Israel. E-mail: f_basis@rambam.health.gov.il Tel: 972
4 854-2348
Received July 19, 2017; Accepted September 08, 2017; Published
September 21, 2017
Citation: Basis F (2017) Burnout among Nurses and Physicians in the
Emergency Department: a Comparison Study. SF J Emer Med1:1.
Copyright: © 2017 Basis F. This is an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original author and source are credited.
Abstract
A correlation between stress in the Emergency Department (ED) and burnout was already proved. The first
studies were done among the nursing staff. Lately they were examined among the physicians. Very few, compared the
influence of the same stressing factors on the physicians and nurses separately in the same working place.
Objectives
To compare the causes of stress among nurses and physicians separately, and to estimate the correlation
between these parameters and burnout.
Materials and Method
A five sections questionnaire was delivered to the physicians and nurses in the same ED.Forty questions
were divided into 12 stress categories, and 12 questions dealt with somatic complains of the medical staff. Each
questionnaire was analyzed by the suitable statistical test to prove the correlation.
Results
The most stressing factors between both groups were violence, and exerted pressure from the patients’
families. We found a high correlation between these stressing factors and burnout. Other causes for burnout were the
physical working conditions and loss of control over it (overcrowding, inflow and outflow of patients from the ED).
Among the physicians, the financial element played a significant role, while among the nurses; it was the lack of the
backup of the hospital management in evacuating patients from the ED. We found no influence of the partiality of the
job (half or full job) on burnout.
Conclusions
The stress scoring of the nursing staff was higher than that of the physicians. The feeling of “loss of control”
was higher among the nurses than that of the physicians. Generally, the main causes for stress were still quite the same,
and the differences in burnout between both groups were non-significant.