The Effect of Some Variables on Burnout of Turkish Dentists

Objectives:Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do "people work" of some kind. Health care providers, including dentists, are at high risk for burnout because their occupation often requires intense interaction with fearful, demanding patients on a daily basis. The purpose of this study was to investigate burnout levels of Turkish dentists in terms of some variables. Methods: With a response rate of 78%, a representative group of 760 Turkish general dental practitioners from different geographic regions of country responded to a postal questionnaire containing a Turkish version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI-TR).Four variables were: Expectations of dentists from profession, practioner's attitude to continuing education programs, the presence of a dentist in the family, the attitude of practioners to their children's selecting the same profession. Three subscale scores were: Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization and Personal Accomplishment. For statistical analysis multivariate analysis of variance and Student's t-tests were used. Results: The burnout scores of the dentists satisfied with their professions were lower than the dentists dissatisfied with their professions. No difference was observed between the burnout scores of dentists who found the post-graduate education sufficent and the ones finding the post-graduate education insufficient. It was also observed that 21% of correspondents had a dentist in their family. As a result of t-test, the presence or absence of a dentist in the family did not create any difference. When asked whether they wanted their children to be a dentist or not, it was found that the burnout scores of the ones answering the question positively were lower than the ones answering negatively. Conclusions: In general, Turkish practioners are pleased with their profession and wish their children to choose the same profession.(solen885@hotmail.com)