Leader behavior impact on intensive care practitioners' burnout

Introduction

Global spreads of burnout among healthcare practitioners, particularly within intensive care units (ICUs), has been described as a growing crisis with a variety of unwanted consequences as drawbacks [[1]].

Objectives

Our primary objective was to explore the prevalence of burnout in this area among different healthcare givers; we also focused on identifying the contributing factors as well as the role of empowerment and leadership impact.

Methods

We employed a cross-sectional descriptive study with purposive sampling. A combined methodological approach (quantitative and qualitative) was used with questionnaires. We used five instrument: Conditions of work effectiveness scale (CWES), Work stress scale (WSS), Maslasch Burnout scale (MBI-HSS), Leadership scale (LS), and Empowerment scale (ES).

Results

We studied 200 healthcare practitioners within medical and surgical ICUs. The case study that focused on Qatari intensive care confirmed a high prevalence of burnout (25.5%), where physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists were equally at risk (p = 0.19). Younger individuals were more likely to burn out (p = 0.000). We report a high association of burnout with the instruments that we used. Both positive leadership and empowerment had a negative effect on burnout variance (12.4 and 3.8%, respectively) when considering practitioner burnout.

Conclusions

The reported high burnout rate among practitioners in ICU settings necessitates special attention in terms of positive leadership attitudes; empowerment could serve as an ameliorating factor.

Grant Acknowledgment

We thank all of the members of the cardiothoracic surgery department and the medical research center of Hamad medical corporation, Qatar and University of Liverpool, UK.

Table 1 Burnout relation with other scores and age.