Three quarters of CUH emergency department staff suffer burnout

By Lynne Kelleher

Three out of four emergency department (ED) staff in an Irish hospital met the criteria for burnout, according to a new study.

Staff in Irish EDs have been working in increasingly chaotic conditions over the past few years as the number of people on trolleys in these departments all over the country have continued to soar.

The new research found that 70% of doctors and 78% of nurses met the benchmark for the workplace exhaustion condition in the ED at Cork University Hospital (CUH).

Eight out of 10 radiographers, 100% of care assistants, and 67% of porters also met the bar for the stress-related condition, along with 63% of hospital administrators.

The research showed that 75% of the study participants overall met the criteria for burnout.

The study, one of the first of its kind in Ireland, indicated that symptoms of burnout were variable and included “emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion, and disengagement”.

The study, just published in the Irish Journal of Medical Science, also revealed that burnout rates were significantly associated with a history of depression.

Nurses in the Cork study were found to have a “dramatically higher” burnout rate — nearly three times the international rate of 26% — whereas the rate for physicians is similar to the international rate of 65%.

The study, which was headed up by Peter Chernoff, said the findings built on research across the globe showing the prevalence of burnout in “high-stress environments like emergency departments”.

The authors of the study said: “Obstacles such as rising healthcare costs and increasingly excessive demands on the frontline workforce contribute to the environment of burnout in all hospital staff.”

Some 97 ED staff in CUH were gauged for the workplace stress condition using the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory.

The authors reported: “An accessible, reliable, and valid measure of burnout may help individuals in the emergency department identify emotional exhaustion and disengagement.

“It can be argued that hospital administrators and policymakers also have an important role in reducing the prevalence of burnout whether through primary prevention, routine screening or interventions aimed at reducing burnout.”

The study said that burnout, described as a “state of emotional depletion developed in the workplace”, was found to be very common in CUH.

Other studies have shown that emergency department doctors are three times more likely than the average doctor to experience professional burnout

The authors of the CUH study said that the effects of burnout can have far-reaching implications for the health service.

The authors also noted that other, similar studies have found that burnout among doctors increases the prevalence of a range of mental and physical health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, hypertension, marital disharmony, and even suicide.