Burnout Syndrome in a Military Tertiary Hospital Staff during the COVID-19 Contingency

Abstract

(1) Background: Burnout syndrome (BOS) is defined as a psychological state of physical and mental fatigue associated with work. The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted the physical and mental wellbeing of health professionals. The objective of this work was to determine the impact on personnel, monitoring the frequency of BOS throughout the pandemic. (2) Methods: The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was self-applied in four periods of the pandemic according to sociodemographic and employment characteristics. In this study, all hospital personnel were included; the association of BOS with sex, age, type of participant (civilian or military), military rank and profession was analyzed. (3) Results: The frequency of BOS was 2.4% (start of the pandemic), 7.9% (peak of the first wave), 3.7% (end of the first wave) and 3.6% (peak of the third wave). Emotional exhaustion (EE) was the most affected factor, and the groups most affected were men under 30 years of age, civilians, chiefs and doctors, especially undergraduate medical doctors and specialty resident doctors, and nursing personnel were less affected. (4) Conclusions: The low BOS levels show that the containment measures and military training implemented by the hospital authorities were effective, although the chief personnel were more affected in the first wave. It is probable that this combination allowed the containment of BOS, which was not observed in civilians.