Rozenblum H1, Dr. Lev Ari S1
1Tel Aviv University, Public Health, Tel Aviv, Israel
Background: Burnout has been found to be a significant problem among workers within the service professions, especially among health care workers. This phenomenon has been studied among physiotherapists as well, but, to the best of our knowledge, no literature review has yet been done on the subject.
Purpose: To study the level of burnout among physiotherapists in three different dimensions: Emotional exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP) and Reduced Personal Accomplishment (PA). To compare the level of burnout among physiotherapists to that of other health care workers and to the general population. To identify which variables are associated with burnout among physiotherapists, and identify effective preventive interventions for physiotherapists.
Methods: A literature search was performed in Medline, Cinahl, Psycinfo, Google Scholar, the Journal of the Israel Physiotherapy Society (JIPTS) and dissertations from the University of Tel Aviv up to March 2018. Inclusion criteria included cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies, and literature reviews, exclusively physiotherapists or multi-disciplinary staff that included physiotherapists and were published in English or Hebrew with access to the full article.
Results: Twenty seven relevant articles were retrieved. The studies included 4,721 physiotherapists from four Continents and fifteen Countries. There was a high level of variability between the results of the various studies. According to the Maslach burnout inventory, the level of burnout among physiotherapists ranged from a low to a high level in all three dimensions. 8% to 58% of the Participants in the studies reported a high EE score (27≤), 5% to 33% reported a high DP score (13≤) and 3% to 97% reported a low PA score ( 31≥ ). Since the level of burnout among physiotherapists was not homogeneous, it was not possible to compare it with that of the general population or with other health care workers. Some distinct variables were identified in several studies and showed a possible association with burnout. Age, clinical experience and professional development activities showed a negative correlation with burnout. However, identification of preventive interventions specific for physiotherapists was not possible because from all of the studies focusing on interventions in this review, only two were found specific for physiotherapists with far few numbers to make definitive conclusion.
Conclusion(s): Physiotherapists demonstrated low to high levels of burnout in all three subscales of burnout. Given the predictive variables of burnout that were identified in this review, it is still recommended that physiotherapists and organizations initiate interventions to decrease burnout levels among young workers and encourage ongoing professional training.
Implications: Future prospective studies are warranted in order to establish the association between the predictive variables and to further investigate the effectiveness of specific interventions to prevent burnout among physiotherapists.
Keywords: Burnout, Physical therapist, Physiotherapist
Funding acknowledgements: No Funding
Purpose: To study the level of burnout among physiotherapists in three different dimensions: Emotional exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP) and Reduced Personal Accomplishment (PA). To compare the level of burnout among physiotherapists to that of other health care workers and to the general population. To identify which variables are associated with burnout among physiotherapists, and identify effective preventive interventions for physiotherapists.
Methods: A literature search was performed in Medline, Cinahl, Psycinfo, Google Scholar, the Journal of the Israel Physiotherapy Society (JIPTS) and dissertations from the University of Tel Aviv up to March 2018. Inclusion criteria included cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies, and literature reviews, exclusively physiotherapists or multi-disciplinary staff that included physiotherapists and were published in English or Hebrew with access to the full article.
Results: Twenty seven relevant articles were retrieved. The studies included 4,721 physiotherapists from four Continents and fifteen Countries. There was a high level of variability between the results of the various studies. According to the Maslach burnout inventory, the level of burnout among physiotherapists ranged from a low to a high level in all three dimensions. 8% to 58% of the Participants in the studies reported a high EE score (27≤), 5% to 33% reported a high DP score (13≤) and 3% to 97% reported a low PA score ( 31≥ ). Since the level of burnout among physiotherapists was not homogeneous, it was not possible to compare it with that of the general population or with other health care workers. Some distinct variables were identified in several studies and showed a possible association with burnout. Age, clinical experience and professional development activities showed a negative correlation with burnout. However, identification of preventive interventions specific for physiotherapists was not possible because from all of the studies focusing on interventions in this review, only two were found specific for physiotherapists with far few numbers to make definitive conclusion.
Conclusion(s): Physiotherapists demonstrated low to high levels of burnout in all three subscales of burnout. Given the predictive variables of burnout that were identified in this review, it is still recommended that physiotherapists and organizations initiate interventions to decrease burnout levels among young workers and encourage ongoing professional training.
Implications: Future prospective studies are warranted in order to establish the association between the predictive variables and to further investigate the effectiveness of specific interventions to prevent burnout among physiotherapists.
Keywords: Burnout, Physical therapist, Physiotherapist
Funding acknowledgements: No Funding
Topic: Mental health; Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing
Ethics approval required: No
Institution: Tel-Aviv University
Ethics committee: Tel-Aviv University
Reason not required: Ethics approval was not required since this is a literature review
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
