Burnout Syndrome in Dentists from Campo Grande (MS), Brazil

Burnout Syndrome is a psychological syndrome resulting from chronic interpersonal stress in the workplace and is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Objective: To estimate Burnout Syndrome’s prevalence among dentists from public health system in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Methods: Descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS software, version 13.0, with a significance level of 5%. All dentists from the public health system were invited to participate (n=234), except those working in the countryside, on vacation or leaving, constituting a final sample of 160 dentists. To collect data a translated version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used, which approaches the three Syndrome´s dimensions and measures them separately; and also demographics questionnaire. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (CEP/UFMS) under protocol number 1796. Results: The sample was predominantly female (68.8%, n=110), aged between 31 and 60 years (77.5%, n=124), Catholic (65.6%, n=105) and reported religiosity with a score between 1 and 4 (80.6%, n=129), which is equivalent as greater religiosity. Most said to be married (66.3%, n=106) and had just specialization course graduate (75.6%, n=121). It was found that most of the sample had low Burnout in Emotional Exhaustion (68,8%, n=110) and Depersonalization (98.1%, n=157). As for Personal accomplishment, 72.5% (n=116) showed Burnout between low and medium. In Depersonalization dimension, dentists who reported no religion has had significantly higher scores than those who reported having a religion (Tukey post-test, p <0.05). There were positive and significant correlation between the scores for Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization (linear correlation test of Pearson, p<0.001, r=0.49). Conclusion: dentists showed a low prevalence of Burnout Syndrome.