Professional burnout syndrome among correctional facility officers

Correctional facilities present unique work places--the employees there work in tough, demanding and hazardous working conditions, in real life-threatening environment, subjected to physical and mental fatigue, risk of infectious diseases, work in shifts, with inadequate pay, etc. The aim of this study was to find the prevalence and level of burnout syndrome among employees working in the District Prison of the town of Plovdiv.

The study included all employees that had direct contact with the inmates in the prison. We recruited 106 employees that participated in the study anonymously and voluntarily. The main instrument we used was the questionnaire designed according to the methods developed by V. Boiko, which allows identification of professional burnout syndrome in its three phases with four symptoms in each of the phases.

We found a high prevalence of burnout syndrome among the staff in the District Prison in Plovdiv (74.53%). All three phases of burnout were found to have a high prevalence rate--the stress phase: 48.11%, the resistance phase: 66.98%, the exhaustion phase: 41.51%. The rank in the service hierarchy was found to be a predictor in the stress phase, B = 0.701, p = 0.048, Exp(B) = 2.106, 95%CI [1.00; 4.04]. The single officers (83.33% of the divorced and 55.56% of the single employees) and those of the staff that were more highly educated (78.72%) had elevated levels of burnout syndrome, and these manifested during the first 5 years of their service in the prison (77.78%).

In Bulgaria at present the burnout syndrome has not been studied among employees working in correctional facilities. We found a high prevalence of the syndrome among the employees of the District Prison - Plovdiv. The younger, the single and the more educated employees had greater levels of burnout syndrome, which manifest during the first 5 years of their service. The results suggest that there is a need to develop and implement effective strategies to reduce and prevent development of burnout syndrome.