Burnout among health professionals working in oncology: current evidence and challenges for future research

This review aims to show the current evidence and the challenges that remain to guide future research on the prevalence, incidence, prognosis, and factors associated with burnout, and current interventions for its prevention and reduction.

An overview of systematic reviews with meta-analyses found that burnout is highly prevalent among oncologists and oncology nurses, mainly emotional exhaustion. However, these meta-analyses showed a lack of original research from continents such as Africa or Oceania, and no studies were meta-analyzed evaluating physical therapists or psycho-oncologists. To our knowledge, the incidence of occupational burnout has not been meta-analyzed on this topic, and the number of prospective cohort studies and randomized clinical trials is probably limited. On the other hand, some cross-sectional studies and nonrandomized clinical trials have been recently published. These studies have highlighted the association between burnout with psychological (e.g. anxiety) and occupational factors (e.g. job demands) and the reduction of burnout using different psychological interventions.

Occupational burnout is a topic of interest in oncology. However, important gaps in knowledge remain and need to be filled before establishing firm conclusions on this topic.