A new study found that healthcare staff working during the COVID-19 pandemic are up to 3.3 times more likely to feel burnout compared to non-healthcare professionals.
Research by the Queen Mary University of London has discovered the impact of working in healthcare during COVID-19. The significantly increased likelihood of burnout leads researchers to become concerned about how this could result in more mental health disorders and cardiovascular diseases in healthcare staff.
The findings were published in BJPsych Open and funded by Barts Charity.
What is burnout?
According to Mental Health UK, burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. It occurs following exposure to long-term stress in your job or when you have worked in a physically or emotionally draining role for an extended period.
Signs of burnout can include feeling tired, helpless, detached, a negative outlook, self-doubt, and feeling overwhelmed.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the health of healthcare workers
The study involved a series of online surveys assessing the rates of major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, insomnia, burnout, and low emotional wellbeing. The first survey was conducted in July-September 2020, the second six weeks later, and the final survey was completed during the second UK national lockdown.
The researchers were alarmed to find that healthcare workers had an elevated risk of burnout compared to non-healthcare workers during the second and third surveys. Moreover, burnout risk increased over time from 2.5-times to 3.3 times more likely.
The researchers believed that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the mental health of the entire population; however, higher workloads, long hours, the stress of caring for patients, and anxiety around COVID-19 exposure caused healthcare professionals to experience greater stress than other people.
Dr Ajay Gupta, study author and Senior Clinical Lecturer at Queen Mary and Honorary Consultant in Clinical Pharmacology and Cardiovascular Medicine, said: “We should all be worried about the disproportionately high rates of burnout in healthcare professionals, which may persist and lead to even greater staffing and retention crisis for an already overburdened and underfunded NHS.
“It’s a problem that no one seems to want to address, and we could be sleep-walking into a disaster unless we listen to our healthcare workers’ concerns and give them the support they need. Unless we can stop the burnout trend, we could see more mental health and physical consequences such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in our doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers.”
Other studies have shown that healthcare workers are at a greater risk of mental health issues; however, these studies were completed at certain time points or focussed on specific mental health conditions. This new study, part of the COVID-19 disease and Physical and Emotional Wellbeing of Health Care Professionals (CoPE-HCP) study, was the first to focus on a range of mental health issues and relatively underexamined issues such as burnout and emotional wellbeing at multiple time points during the pandemic.
