An Exploratory Model of How Ethical Indicators Predict Health Professional Burnout

The objectives of this study were to characterize burnout in five different health professions (i.e., pharmacists, nurses, occupational therapists, psychologists, and mental health counselors) as well as to determine if moral distress, ethical stress, and/or ethical climate were predictive of burnout and job satisfaction. Cross-sectional survey data were collected in the USA using validated measures from a sample of 291 in early 2022 (COVID-19 Omicron wave). The average age of participants was 51 years (s.d. = 12.59) and most identified as female (78%), White/Caucasian (82%), married/in a domestic partnership (72%), without dependents (57%), and had > 20 years of experience (53%). Results demonstrated that two of the three dimensions of burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) reached clinically significant levels among nurses, occupational therapists, and pharmacists, but not among psychologists or mental health counselors. In testing an exploratory structural equation model, moral distress, ethics stress, and ethical climate contributed significantly to the burnout and job satisfaction of all professionals (CFI = 0.905; SRMR = 0.056; Gamma hat scaled = 0.931). These findings support a theoretical framework for explaining associations between ethical indicators and burnout and job satisfaction. Future research should explore if professions with less burnout experience differences in the organizational environment, autonomy, and independence of clinical work, and/or professional identity. Exploration into professional socialization, such as strategies learned as part of training and development, may be warranted to identify factors that buffer or mitigate burnout risk.