Medicina Ocupacional y Asuntos de Salud

Abstracto

Burnout Level among General and Specialist Dentists: A Global Manpower Concern

Yonit Zaken, Hilla Ovadia-Gonen, Jonathan Mann and Yuval Vered

Introduction: Professional burnout is considered a risk to the dental profession. In order to measure the professional burnout levels among Israeli dentists, an initial survey was conducted in 2010 among purposive cluster sample of 320 dentists. Methods: Professional burnout level was measured by the burnout measure short version questionnaire. Independent variables included sex, age, specialization (general or specialist dentist), and years of professional experience. Univariate and multivariate analysis were performed testing the relationship of these independent variables to each of the 10 separate items in the burnout instrument. Results: 144 dentists (45%) were found to be experiencing burnout, 10 dentists (3%) demonstrated severe burnout level. The most prevalent burnout items were physical exhaustion (76%) and negative attitude towards patients (60%). The multiple logistic regression model revealed that general dentist were more likely than specialist dentists to report a burnout score for feeling tired, feeling physically weak and sickly, feeling helpless, and feeling worthless and like a failure. Conclusions: As general dentists are the majority of the dental manpower worldwide, our findings are relevant to the general dental practice and to the efforts to prevent and cope with professional burnout.