Prevalence of Burnout among Healthcare Professionals in Singapore

_{Shared by Zann Foo, SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute for Patient Safety & Quality (IPSQ), Singapore. GKPS Reference: Prevalence of Burnout Among Healthcare Professionals in Singapore. Global Knowledge Sharing Platform for Patient Safety (GKPS). 2023. A008.}

_{Original Article Reference: Tan KH, Lim BL, Foo Z, Tang JY, Sim M, Lee PT, Fong KY. Prevalence of Burnout among Healthcare Professionals in Singapore. Ann Acad Med Singapore 2022;51:409-16 https://doi.org/10.47102/annals-acadmedsg.2021338}

The aim was to study the prevalence of burnout among various groups of health care professionals in Singapore.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess and compare burnout level of health care professional groups in Singapore. There was high prevalence of burnout among health care professional groups with significant differences in the 3 burnout categories:

1. emotional exhaustion

2. depersonalisation

3. personal accomplishment

The study supports the need to address burnout of all health care professional groups. The data help to guide policy and efforts to improve the burnout of health care professionals and how we can create a safe working environment for health care workers.

Note: We used the MBI-HSS, a validated tool for measuring burnout. It is designed for professionals in the human service settings with direct contact with recipients, which in our settings, applies to patients, caregivers or colleagues. MBI comprises 3 scales: the emotional exhaustion (EE) scale measures feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one’s work; the depersonalisation (DP) scale measures an unfeeling and impersonal response towards the recipients of one’s service, care treatment or instruction; and the scale on personal accomplishment (PA) determines feelings of competence and successful achievement in one’s work. Each scale consists of multiple questionnaires over a 7-point Likert scale from 0 (never) to 6 (every day) to assess frequency of the feeling that the respondent has experienced related to the scale. Each scale is scored individually and interpreted separately. The scales are not aggregated, and as with most published studies that used the MBI tool, we adopt the following as cut-off levels for the respective scores for burnout: EE score ≥27(high), DP score ≥10 (high) or PA score ≤33 (low)

Reference: Maslach C, Jackson SE, Leiter M. Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual3rd ed. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press; 1996.