The connection between personal factors and burnout among medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

TL;DR

This study explores how personal traits of medical workers during the pandemic relate to burnout symptoms like emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.

Contribution

The study identifies specific personality traits linked to burnout components in medical workers during the pandemic.

Findings

Honesty is negatively associated with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and positively with professionalism.

Emotionality correlates with higher emotional exhaustion and reduced professional competence.

Extroversion is linked to lower emotional exhaustion and better professional performance.

Abstract

Work in the severe conditions of the pandemic has become a risk factor for the deterioration of the medical workers’ psychological state, which together can lead to professional burnout and, as a consequence, to professional mistakes (Pervichko, Konyukhovskaya, 2020).

The aim of the research was to study the connection between personal factors of medical workers and professional burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The degree of professional burnout was assessed using Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) (Maslach, 2000; Vodopianova, Starchenkova, 2008), HEXACO Personality Inventory (short version) was used to study personality traits (Ashton, Lee, 2007; Egorova, et al., 2019).

The study was conducted from May 2020 to October 2022. The sample consisted of 197 medical workers (32 men and 165 women), whose average age was 38.85±12.05.

Honesty as a personality trait is negatively significantly associated with emotional exhaustion (r=-0.268, p=0.000), depersonalization (r=-0.323, p=0.000) and positively associated with a smaller reduction in professionalism (r=0.290, p=0.000). Emotionality in medical workers is positively significantly associated with emotional exhaustion (r=0.358, p=0.000) and depersonalization (r=0.243, p=0.001) and with a greater reduction in professionalism (r=-0.380, p=0.000). Extroversion is negatively associated with emotional exhaustion (r=-0.478, p=0.000) and depersonalization (r=-0.376, p=0.000) and positively associated with a smaller reduction in professional achievements (r=0.566, p=0.000). Benevolence and conscientiousness reveal negative associations with depersonalization (r=-0.248, p=0.001; r=-0.180, p=0.012) and positive associations with a smaller reduction in professionalism (r=0.190, p=0.008; r=0.301, p=0.000).

Thus, the state of emotional exhaustion during burnout is associated with greater emotionality, less honesty and extroversion. Whereas depersonalization and a greater negative assessment of one’s own professional competence and productivity is associated with less honesty, more emotionality, less extroversion, benevolence and consciousness.

Disclosure: Research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 21-18-00624.

None Declared