COVID-19 Patient Care Leading to Occupational Burnout in Resident Doctors: A Follow-up Study

Burnout during residency may require reorganization of health services during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study mainly aimed to compare the burnout levels between resident doctors who cared and those who did not care for COVID-19 patients at the …. University Hospital, which has been serving as a pandemic hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The study was designed as a cross-sectional study. One hundred resident doctors were recruited to the first phase of the current study between April 1, 2020 and June 30, 2020 (T1).These participants were then followed-up and re-called to participate in the second phase of the study between October 30, 2020 and November 30, 2020 (T2). Eighty-four resident doctors were available and agreed to participate in the second phase of the study. Once the participants accepted to participate in the study, they were asked to complete "the Evaluation Form," "the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)," "the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)," and "the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)."

In both T1 and T2 periods, the resident doctors who provided care to COVID-19 patients had significantly higher BAI and PHQ-9 scores compared to the scores of those who did not care for COVID-19 patients (P < .05). Moreover, in the T2 period, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Emotional Exhaustion (MBI-EE) and Maslach Burnout Inventory-Depersonalization (MBI-DP) scores of the resident doctors who cared for COVID-19 patients were detected as significantly higher than the scores of those who did not care for COVID-19 patients.

This study demonstrated that resident doctors who cared for COVID-19 patients face increased problems of burnout, anxiety, and depression levels.