Occupational stress and burnout among Hong Kong dentists

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To identify the occupational stressors and the level of burnout among dentists in Hong Kong, and to investigate the association between occupational stress and level of burnout. METHODS: A systematic sample of 1,086 dentists was selected from the list of registered dentists in Hong Kong. Questionnaires which assessed the sources of occupational stress, level of burnout, coping strategies and socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents were mailed to the selected dentists. Occupational stress included 33 stressors in 5 stressor groups: patient-related, time-related, income-related, job-related and staff/technically-related (score range: 1-5, high level ≥4). Level of burnout was assessed by Maslach Burnout Inventory – Human Services Survey with 3 scores: Emotional Exhaustion (EE, score range: 0-54, high level ≥27), Depersonalization (DP, score range: 0-30, high level ≥13) and Personal Accomplishment (PA, score range: 0-48, low level ≤31). RESULTS: Altogether 301 completed questionnaires were received and 22 questionnaires were undelivered (response rate: 28.3%). The top three occupational stressors identifed were all patient-related: “actually making clinical mistakes” (52.8%), “the possibility of making mistakes” (51.5%) and “patient having a medical emergency in surgery” (48.5%). The mean scores for the 5 stressor groups were 3.4 (patient-related), 3.1 (time-related), 2.5 (income-relate), 2.5 (job-related), and 2.6 (staff/technically-related) respectively. The mean EE, DP and PA scores were 19.4, 7.8 and 33.3 respectively. About a quarter of the respondents had high EE level (25.4%) while 17.2% and 39.0% had high DP and low PA level respectively. However, only 7.0% of the respondents had overall high-burnout (high EE, high PD and low PA). Respondents with high level of EE and PD and low level of PA had significantly higher mean scores in all 5 stressor group scores (all p<0.05) except low level of PA was not associated time-related and staff/technically-related stressors (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Patient-related stressors are the top occupational stressors experienced by the dentists in Hong Kong. However, a low proportion of dentists have overall high-burnout. Positive association between occupational stress and level of burnout was found.