Burnout and Job Satisfaction in Allied Health Professionals: Searching for Evidence Informed Interventions and Their...

Healthcare professionals are experiencing increased rates of burnout, turnover, and low job satisfaction. Burnout and job satisfaction have been studied extensively in medicine and nursing. This scoping review explores the evidence on burnout and job satisfaction among physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists, including a review of objective measures or interventional strategies to address these issues. Using the PRISMA for scoping reviews framework, searches were completed in PubMed, CINAHL, APA PsychInfo, SCOPUS, ABI Inform, and gray literature. Overall, the searches resulted in 839 articles. After exclusion of ineligible studies, 30 studies were included for review. Burnout was linked to workplace ethics, compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and workload demands. Job satisfaction was negatively associated with productivity requirements and positively associated with satisfaction with job supervision. Three of the 30 studies had intervention groups and were evaluated further for evidence-based intervention strategies impacting burnout and job satisfaction. The findings of this scoping review reveal the significant gaps in the literature to understand the impact of burnout and job satisfaction within the allied health professions of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology.