Burnout syndrome among medical residents: A systematic review and meta-analysis

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 13; no. 11; p. e0206840
• Main Authors: Rodrigues, Hugo, Cobucci, Ricardo, Oliveira, Antônio, Cabral, João Victor, Medeiros, Leany, Gurgel, Karen, Souza, Tházio, Gonçalves, Ana Katherine
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 12-11-2018; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Anesthesiology; Biology and Life Sciences; Burn out (Psychology); Burnout; Burnout, Psychological - epidemiology; Burnout, Psychological - psychology; Collection Review; Data bases; Depersonalization; Depersonalization - epidemiology; Depersonalization - psychology; Diagnosis; Drug stores; Exhaustion; Family physicians; Gynecology; Health care; Health education; Humans; Internal Medicine - statistics & numerical data; Internet; Internship and Residency - statistics & numerical data; Internships; Literature reviews; Medical residencies; Medicine; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mental depression; Meta-analysis; Neurology; Obstetrics; Occupational stress; Orthopedics; Otolaryngology; Patient safety; Patient satisfaction; Physical Sciences; Physicians; Physicians - psychology; Plastic surgery; Practice; Prevalence; Psychological aspects; Research and Analysis Methods; Reviews; Risk factors; Scientific papers; Social networks; Social Sciences; Specialties, Surgical - statistics & numerical data; Surgeons; Surgery; Systematic review; Workloads; Brazil; Rio Grande do Norte Brazil
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0206840

Burnout is a psychological syndrome that is very common among medical residents. It consists of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP) and reduced personal accomplishment (PA).
To estimate burnout among different medical residency specialties.
A systematic review with meta-analysis was performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. A search of bibliographic databases and grey literature was conducted, from inception to March 2018. The following databases were accessed: Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus, and 3,575 studies were found. Methodological quality was evaluated by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Methodology Checklist for Cross-Sectional/Prevalence Study. In the final analysis, 26 papers were included. Their references were checked for additional studies, but none were included.
4,664 medical residents were included. High DP, EE and low PA proportions were compared. Specialties were distributed into three groups of different levels of burnout prevalence: general surgery, anesthesiology, obstetrics/gynecology and orthopedics (40.8%); internal medicine, plastic surgery and pediatrics (30.0%); and otolaryngology and neurology (15.4%). Overall burnout prevalence found for all specialties was 35.7%.
The prevalence of burnout syndrome was significantly higher among surgical/urgency residencies than in clinical specialties.
CRD42018090270.