Burnout syndrome and job satisfaction in community health workers

Community health workers play a prominent role in the primary care context in Brazil. Burnout syndrome is an important work-related condition whose consequences affect job satisfaction.

To evaluate the extent of burnout syndrome and job satisfaction among community health workers in a city in southern Santa Catarina.

This analytical, individual, cross-sectional study was conducted in Family Health Units. The participants were selected through random probability sampling, with a sampling error of 10%. After sociodemographic data collection, the Maslach Burnout Inventory and a job satisfaction scale were applied.

All 66 included workers were women. According to the analyses, there was a moderate positive correlation between satisfaction with colleagues and satisfaction with supervisors. There were weak positive correlations between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and between professional fulfillment and satisfaction with promotions. However, there was a weak negative correlation between emotional exhaustion and both professional fulfillment and satisfaction with salary.

The results indicate that the conditions of these workers are sufficiently satisfactory to deal with the demands of the job. Nevertheless, there was substantial dissatisfaction with salary, which can be a demotivator and trigger work-related depression.