Assessment of Burnout in Healthcare Professionals of Pakistan Amid COVID-19 – A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: According to WHO latest by March 19th 2021, it has now become a global threat with globally 122,665,852 confirmed cases and 2,707,206 deaths involving 220 countries.. NIH Pakistan has reported the national tally of COVID 19 cases in Pakistan to 543,214 and total deaths 11,683, making it an extremely serious issue in Pakistan like in the rest of the world. Physicians, consultants, paramedics and other staff working in hospitals are at risk due to the emergence of COVID-19 which also is responsible for severe burnout in the specialties who are working at the frontline. Burnout affects job performance, job satisfaction, interpersonal relationships, and vulnerability to illnesses [1]. This research aims at finding the burnout in healthcare professionals of Karachi, Pakistan due to the current situation of COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and Methods: It is a cross-sectional study carried out in the tertiary care hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan from Feb’2020 – Apr’ 2020 in which the questionnaire based on Malsch burnout inventory were distributed amongst the healthcare professionals including doctors and paramedics, working at the front in departments of emergency, covid special units and other areas. A scoring system of 1-4 was applied (strongly disagree-strongly agree).

Results: The results of this study showed that highest burnout was faced by healthcare professionals in the category of depersonalization and personal accomplishment amid COVID-19 while the association between the burnout and the demographic factors mentioned was also found to be significant. Moreover, the challenges faced by the healthcare professionals to the maximum owing to this pandemic were found to be lack of presence of personal protective equipment and fear to spread the infection to family.

Conclusion: The study concluded that the current pandemic situation of COVID-19 has been significantly associated with the burnout and stress amongst the health care professionals in tertiary hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan, particularly those who are working on the frontline.