Predicting Burnout Factors among Healthcare Providers at Private Hospitals in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates: A Cross-Sectional Study

Assessment of burnout among pharmacy faculty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUND

Burnout is a condition closely linked to deteriorating mental health and diminished work performance. There is a lack of research on burnout among pharmacy faculty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This study aims to assess the burnout rate among pharmacy faculty members in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and to identify predictive factors that contribute to or precipitate the onset of burnout.

METHODS

A cross-sectional, anonymous electronic survey was distributed to all pharmacy faculty members in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The survey included the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey, which measures three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Demographic data, Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators scores, and potential predictors of burnout were collected and analyzed.

RESULTS

A total of 246 pharmacists participated in this study. Among them, 30.4% reported experiencing emotional exhaustion, and a similar percentage scored low on the personal accomplishment subscale. Additionally, 10.9% of the sample exhibited high scores on the depersonalization subscale. The burnout rate was found to be influenced by several factors, including citizenship, the presence of children in the household, and faculty members' academic rank.

CONCLUSION

Pharmacy faculty members at pharmacy colleges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are experiencing significant burnout, particularly in the form of emotional exhaustion and low personal accomplishment scores. Key factors contributing to burnout include citizenship, the presence of children in the household, and academic rank.

Work Engagement and Burnout in a Private Healthcare Unit in Greece

Work engagement represents a positive work-related state of mind characterized by three dimensions: Vigor (high levels of energy and mental resilience during work), Dedication (strong involvement in one's work), and Absorption (complete-joyous immersion in one's tasks). This study aimed to investigate work engagement and burnout in health professionals in a private healthcare unit in Greece. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 151 professionals, including doctors, nurses, administrative staff, and other health professionals involved in this setting. The study duration was four months (January-April 2022). The questionnaire covered sociodemographic and work-related information, along with the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Regarding the subdimensions of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, participants demonstrated a moderate score in Absorption and medium to high scores in Vigor and Dedication. In terms of burnout, they showed a low score in Depersonalization, a medium score in Emotional Exhaustion, and a high score in Personal Accomplishment. Those with nonpermanent employment contracts scored higher in all dimensions of burnout compared to those with permanent employment contracts. Vigor, Dedication, and Absorption correlated negatively with Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization and positively with Personal Accomplishment. Vigor negatively predicted Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment. In conclusion, healthcare professionals in the private healthcare sector in Greece demonstrate moderate work engagement and experience moderate burnout. There are differences in work engagement and burnout based on sociodemographic and work-related characteristics. Promoting work engagement (especially the dimension of Vigor) is essential to preventing and addressing burnout among healthcare professionals.

An Analysis of Burnout among Female Nurse Educators in Saudi Arabia Using K-Means Clustering

Nurse educators are often burnt out and suffer from depression due to their demanding job settings. Biochemical markers of burnout can provide insights into the physiological changes that lead to burnout and may help us prevent burnout symptoms. Research was conducted using a descriptive cross-sectional survey design and a multi-stage sampling method. The ministry of education website provides a list of Saudi Arabian nursing education programs that offer bachelor of science in nursing programs (BSN). The study consisted of 299 qualified participants. Malsach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used to measure burnout as the dependent variable. The MBI is a 22-item scale that measures depersonalization, accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion during work. Bootstrapping with 5000 replicas was used to address potential non-normality. During this framework, four deep neural networks are created. They all have the same number of layers but differ in the number of neurons they have in the hidden layers. The number of female nurse educators experiencing burnout is moderate (mean = 1.92 ± 0.63). Burnout is also moderately observed in terms of emotional exhaustion (mean = 2.13 ± 0.63), depersonalization (mean = 2.12 ± 0.50), and personal achievement scores (mean = 12 2.38 ± 1.13). It has been shown that stacking the clusters at the end of a column increases their accuracy, which can be considered an important feature when classifying.

Level of anxiety and depression among healthcare workers in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic places a high demand on frontline healthcare workers. Healthcare workers are at high-risk of contracting the virus and are subjected to its consequential emotional and psychological effects. This study aimed to measure the level of depression and anxiety among healthcare workers in Saudi Arabia during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional study; data were collected from healthcare workers in Saudi Arabia using a survey that included the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7. A total of 326 participants took part in the study by completing and submitting the survey.

Results

The vast majority of the participating healthcare workers were Saudi nationals (98.8%) working in a public healthcare facility (89.9%). The results indicated that most of the participants had mild levels of anxiety and depression. A total of 72.5% of the respondents had anxiety, ranging from mild (44.1%) to moderate (16.2%) and severe (12.2%). Moreover, 24.4% of the respondents had depression ranging from mild (21.7%) to moderate (2.1%) and severe (0.6%). The generalized linear models showed that the <30 age group (Beta = 0.556, p = 0.037) and the 30-39-year age group (Beta = 0.623, p = 0.019) were predicted to have anxiety. The analysis revealed that females were more anxious (Beta = 0.241, p = 0.005) than males. Healthcare providers working in primary healthcare centers (Beta = -0.315, p = 0.008) and labs (Beta = -0.845. p = 0.0001 were predicted to be less anxious than those working in other healthcare facilities. The data analysis showed that participants with good economic status had more depression than the participants in the other economic status groups (Beta = 0.067, p = 0.003).

Conclusion

This study found that the level of anxiety and depression in healthcare workers was mild. The factors that may contribute to anxiety in healthcare workers included being female, being younger than 30 or between the ages of 31 and 39, working in a specialized hospital facility, and the number of COVID-19 cases the workers dealt with. Economic status was associated with depression. A longitudinal study design is needed to understand the pattern of anxiety levels among healthcare workers over time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Level of anxiety among healthcare providers during COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia: cross-sectional study

Background

The burden of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted widely on the healthcare providers physically and mentally. Many healthcare providers are exposed to psychological stressors due to their high risk of contracting the virus.

Aims

This study aimed to measure the level of anxiety among healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. In addition, this study aimed to measure the level of anxiety based on demographic characteristics.

Method

A cross-sectional survey was employed to recruit a convenience sample of healthcare providers. A pencil and paper self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from demographic and generalized anxiety disorder GAD-7 data. However, this study received written informed consent from participants of the study. In addition, the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Group (IRB Log No. RC20.06.88-03).

Results

A total of 650 participants were recruited, results of GAD-7 showed that 43.5%, 28.9% and 27.5% of healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia experienced mild, moderate and severe anxiety, respectively, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results indicated that age, health specialty, nationality, and sleeping disorders before COVID-19 were associated with anxiety levels.

Conclusion

The generalized anxiety among healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia was mild. Older healthcare providers were found to have a higher level of anxiety compared to other participating healthcare providers. Several factors may contribute to a higher level of anxiety including age, socioeconomic status, marital status, having chronic conditions, and sleeping disorder before the COVID-19 pandemic. To further understand the level of anxiety among healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia, longitudinal and mixed-method research is needed.

The Effective Strategies to Avoid Medication Errors and Improving Reporting Systems

Background: Population-based studies from several countries have constantly shown excessively high rates of medication errors and avoidable deaths. An efficient medication error reporting system is the backbone of reliable practice and a measure of progress towards achieving safety. Improvement efforts and system changes of medication error reporting systems should be targeted towards reductions in the likelihood of injury to future patients. However, the aim of this review is to provide a summary of medication errors reporting culture, incidence reporting systems, creating effective reporting methods, analysis of medication error reports, and recommendations to improve medication errors reporting systems. Methods: Electronic databases (PubMed, Ovid, EBSCOhost, EMBASE, and ProQuest) were examined from 1 January 1998 to 30 June 2020. 180 articles were found and 60 papers were ultimately included in the review. Data were mined by two reviewers and verified by two other reviewers. The search yielded 684 articles, which were then reduced to 60 after the deletion of duplicates via vetting of titles, abstracts, and full-text papers. Results: Studies were principally from the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Limited studies were from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Greece, France, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Detection, measurement, and analysis of medication errors require an active rather than a passive approach. Efforts are needed to encourage medication error reporting, including involving staff in opportunities for improvement and the determination of root cause(s). The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention taxonomy is a classification system to describe and analyze the details around individual medication error events. Conclusion: A successful medication error reporting program should be safe for the reporter, result in constructive and useful recommendations and effective changes while being inclusive of everyone and supported with required resources. Health organizations need to adopt an effectual reporting environment for the medication use process in order to advance into a sounder practice.

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the level of depression among health care workers: cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

The outbreak of the novel Corona Virus Infectious Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly to many countries leading to thousands of deaths globally. The burden of this pandemic has affected the physical and mental health of the frontline health care workers (HCWs) who are exposed to high risk of infection and psychological stressors.

AIMS

The aim is to measure the level of depression among healthcare workers in Saudi Arabia during COVID-19 pandemic to establish interventional strategies.

METHOD

A descriptive cross-sectional study was used to conduct the current study. The data of this study was recruited between 15 June and 15 July 2020 from healthcare providers who work in both public and private healthcare sectors in Riyadh and Eastern province in Saudi Arabia utilizing a self-administered questionnaire. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Group (IRB Log No. RC20.06.88-2). Data were collected by using The Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale SDS. A total of 900 healthcare providers working in the healthcare setting during COVID-19 pandemic were invited to participate in the study. A total of 650 healthcare providers participated in the study by completing and submitting the survey.

RESULTS

Almost 30% suffered from depression which can be divided into three categories; mild depression (26.2%), moderate/major (2.5%) and severe/extreme (0.8%). The finding shows that the level of depression among respondents at the age range of 31-40 years old was significantly higher than the level of depression among respondents with the age above 50 years old. Non-Saudi healthcare workers experienced more depression than Saudi workers. It also shows how nurses suffered from depression compared to their physician colleagues. Those who did not suffer from sleeping disorder perceived more depression as compared to those who are having sleeping disorder.

CONCLUSION

It is recommended that health care facilities should implement strategies to reduce the prevalence of mental health problems among healthcare providers and eventually it will improve their performance in provision of safe and high-quality care for patients.