Burnout and Mobbing Among Physicians in a City Center

• Published in: International journal of caring sciences 2017-05, Vol.10 (2), p.871
• Main Authors: Acimis, Nurhan Meydan, Tekindal, Mustafa Agah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Burnout; Communication; Emotional abuse; Employees; Physicians; Prevention; Reputations; Self expression; Violence; Working conditions; Workplace violence
• ISSN: 1791-5201; 1792-037X

Job burnout and mobbing in the workplace are important problems. The concept of "mobbing" introduced by Heinz Leymann to express the systematic subjection of one or more individuals to emotionally disturbing behaviors. Job burnout is defined by Maslach and Jackson as a syndrome showing itself as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. In both cases, the health of the employees is affected adversely. This study was conducted to examine burnout and mobbing among the residents and emergency physicians who agreed to participate in this study. A cross-sectional/descriptive study was conducted among physicians in May 2013. A questionnaire was mailed to possible participants, 158 were expected to participate and finally 41.1% (65) of them volunteered to participate. The assessment of the burnout levels was performed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the prevalence of mobbing was examined based on Leymann's Typology of Mobbing Behaviors (1993) which consists of 45 mobbing behaviors. Data were analyzed using SPPS 20 (IBM Corp. Released 2011. IBM SPSS for Windows, Version 20.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.). Descriptive statistics were used for categorical and continuous variables. Levene's test was used to test the assumption of homogeneity of variance of parametric tests. Independent Two-Sample T-Test was used to compare the means of two independent groups (Student's t-test). When these assumptions are not met, Mann Whitney-U test was used as an alternative. For comparison of means for three or more groups, One-Way Analysis of Variance was used. For multiple comparisons, Tukey's HSD test was preferred. When the assumptions are not met, the Kruskal Wallis test and Bonferroni-Dunn's multiple comparison test were used. Findings: A 58.4% (38) of the physicians were male, 46.2% (30) were 23 to 30 years old, 56.9% (37) were married and 47.7% (31) were fellows. The mean Emotional Exhaustion level was 26.6±6.88 (min 11.0-max 40.0). The mean for Personal Accomplishment, was: 24.52±3.61(min8.0-max 31.0). Based on Leymann's Typology, the mean for the category "Attacks on reputation" was 21.05±11.59, while that for the category "Prevention of Self-Expression and Communication" was: 20.23±10.36 (min0.0- max19.0). There was a statistically significant difference in the categories of "Prevention of Self-Expression and Communication", "Attacks on reputation" and "Attacks on Quality of Life and Occupational Position" between different age groups