El síndrome del burnout y su incidencia en odontopediatras

Resumo

The burnout syndrome or syndrome of professional waste is a variant of job stress which appears with special incidence in those professional communities called as “human services”, in which the dentist is included. It is a variant of chronic job stress that bears some non-specific manifestations, basically characterized by emotional exhaustion, lost of personalization or cynicism and a negative personal realization. Professions like that of dentist, which are developed in direct contact with patients and in some very particular cir- cumstances, make this syndrome appears with a very specific incidence. Moreover, if we added the particularities of work- ing with children, it seems obvious to think that the exercise of the pediatric odontology can produce a special incidence of this syndrome. The objective of our research has been to evaluate its inci- dence, by studying a sample of 194 Spanish pediatric dentists (130 females and 64 males, with a 39.26 year-old average age), who answered a survey by mail. Our results show that the mean value obtained in the emo- tional exhaustion subscale was 2.20 (DT = 1.34), for the cyni- cism or lost of personalization it was 1.68 (DT = 1.11), and for the professional effectiveness it was 4.76 (DT = 0.76). From our results, it is derived that the sample of analyzed dentists presents a moderate level of burnout, in its three dimensions, with high emotional exhaustion and lost of per- sonalization and with a low personal realization