Depression, Anxiety, and Burnout Among Egyptian Anesthesiologists

Abstract

Background: Anesthesiologists face potential stressors, lack of appreciation, reduced bargaining power, heavy duty in ensuring patient safety and high accountability; therefore work-life balance for them is challenging. Also, anesthesiologists have to work for long hours and on-call duties, leading to their fatigue and vulnerability to mental disorders and burnout. Burnout is considered to be an epidemic and it received an increased worldwide attention. The study objective was to evaluate the prevalence and associated factors of depression, anxiety and burnout among Egyptian anesthesiologists.

Methods: A cross‑sectional observational study using online questionnaire that followed the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-survey that was administered via social media applications. It consists of four sections, section for Socio-Demographic Characteristics of participants, section about participants’ anxiety disorder, section about participants’ depressive symptoms and section about participants’ burnout syndrome.

Results: A total of 145 Egyptian anesthesiologists were included in this study the current study revealed that psychological burden among anesthesiologists, anxiety, depression, and burnout occurred among 55.2%, 42.1%, and 36.6% of anesthesiologists, respectively. Those working > 8 h had more anxiety symptoms than others working less than 8 h (p <0.001). Depressed participants have more anxiety symptoms compared to non-depressed (65.6% vs 47.6%, respectively). Presence of burnout is associated with more anxiety symptoms (p <0.001).