An important issue of burnout among pre-hospital emergency medical personnel in Chengdu: a cross-sectional study

Liu et al. BMC Emergency Medicine (2024) 24:69 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12873-024-00984-1 BMC Emergency Medicine Open Access RESEARCH An important issue of burnout among prehospital emergency medical personnel in Chengdu: a cross-sectional study ZhiJiang Liu1, Li Luo2, Hang Dai2, Bihua Zhang3, Lin Ma1 and Tao Xiang2* Abstract Objective This survey aims to comprehensively understand occupational burnout among pre-hospital emergency medical personnel and explore associated risk factors. Methods A cross-sectional online survey using a census method was conducted between 15 July, 2023, and ends on 14 August, 2023, in Chengdu, SiChuan province, China. The questionnaire included general demographic information, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) with 15 items, and the Fatigue Scale-14 (FS-14) with 14 items. Univariate analysis was conducted on all variables, followed by multivariate logistic regression models to examine the associations between occupational burnout and the risk factors. Results A total of 2,299 participants,99.57% completed the survey effectively The participants were from 166 medical institutions in Chengdu, comprising 1,420 nurses (61.50%) and 889 clinical doctors (38.50%). A total of 33.36% participants experienced burnout, predominantly mild (30.27%), followed by moderate (2.78%) and severe (0.3%). Physicians, higher fatigue scores, age, work experience appeared to be related to burnout. Logistic regression models revealed that individuals aged over 50 were less prone to experience burnout compared to medical staff aged 18–30 (OR: 0.269, 95% CI: 0.115–0.627, p = 0.002). Physicians were more prone to experience burnout compared to nursing staff (OR: 0.690, 95% CI: 0.531–0.898, p = 0.006). Those with 0–5 years of experience were more prone to experience burnout compared to those with 6–10 years or over 15 years of experience (OR: 0.734, 95% CI: 0.547–0.986, p = 0.040; OR: 0.559, 95% CI: 0.339–0.924, p = 0.023). Additionally, for each 1-point increase in the fatigue score, the likelihood of burnout in medical staff increased by 1.367 times (OR: 1.367, 95% CI: 1.323–1.412, p < 0.0001). Conclusion Pre-hospital emergency medical personnel demonstrate a notable prevalence of mild job burnout. These results provide a groundwork for future focus on the various stages of job burnout within pre-hospital emergency staff, alerting hospital and departmental managers to promptly address the mental well-being of their personnel and intervene as needed. Keywords Burnout, Prehospital, Emergency workers *Correspondence: Tao Xiang 1 Chengdu medical emergency center, 610041 Chengdu, China 2 Department of emergency, The Third People’s Hospital of Chengdu, 610031 Chengdu, China 3 College of medicine, southwest jiaotong university, 610036 Chengdu, China © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Liu et al. BMC Emergency Medicine (2024) 24:69 Occupational burnout syndrome is a significant issue across various industries, particularly, the medical field, where the demanding nature of the work increases the vulnerability to burnout among emergency department personnel. Burnout has been widely acknowledged as a substantial concern for healthcare professionals, especially those employed in high-stress settings such as emergency departments [1]. The World Health Organization acknowledges that occupational burnout contributes to the deterioration of the health of workers facing difficulties in managing chronic work-related stress [2]. Moreover, studies have demonstrated that work burnout is linked to reduced productivity, elevated employee turnover, an increased absenteeism and turnover intent [3–5]. There is a strong association between the burnout experienced by healthcare workers and significant repercussions, including failed resuscitation attempts and diminished patient care quality [6–9]. Researchers have found a significant correlation among work-related issues, burnout, and job satisfaction, underscoring the importance of addressing burnout-contributing factors within the emergency workers [10]. Pre-hospital emergency care is a crucial component of the emergency department’s responsibilities. It involves the rescue and transportation of injured and ill patients at the scene, as well as their subsequent supervision and transfer to different medical facilities. It takes priority over emergency care in the emergency medical service system and ICU treatment, making it the critical initial step [11]. This work is essential for reducing mortality and disability in emergency patients [12]. A variety of public health emergencies and sudden disaster accidents showed a growing trend, and the prehospital emergency care system has become an important part of the urban security system and public health emergency treatment system [13].The demanding nature of pre-hospital emergency care, characterized by heavy workloads, time-sensitive situations, rapid transitions, and a necessity for high efficiency, demands efficient management and resource allocation in the face of limited resources, uncertainty, lack of recognition, setbacks, and interpersonal conflicts. These factors impose tremendous pressure on pre-hospital emergency care personnel, potentially resulting in occupational burnout. Several studies have shown that job burnout is widespread among prehospital emergency personnel at home and abroad [14–16, 17].. Therefore, the job burnout of prehospital emergency personnel need to attract attention. Gender, age, occupation, education, professional title, years of poerational experience, yeas of work experience in EMS occupation, employment relationship and fatigue were considered risk factors for job burnout among healthcare workers [5, 9, 18, 19]. The current study explores the influencing factors of job burnout among prehospital first responders, the participants Page 2 of 9 were recruited from only one or a few medical institutions. Th (...truncated)