Burnout and compassion fatigue are now recognized as occupational hazards associated with the medical profession. Interestingly, burnout and compassion fatigue do not occur in every physician and many continue to find joy, meaning and satisfaction in their work despite its challenges and stressors. Our study looked at the relationship between burnout, work engagement, compassion fatigue and satisfaction amongst doctors. We also studied the relationship between these and four measureable intrinsic human factors; self-efficacy, resilient personality type, sense of gratitude and work calling. Our study found that 37% of the doctors were at high risk of burnout and 7.5% were at high risk of compassion fatigue and only 3.3% and 1.5% were at low risk of burnout and compassion fatigue respectively. Only 2.7% and 0.3% had high rates of work engagement and compassion satisfaction respectively. There was a mild but significant negative correlation between burnout and engagement, and a poor negative correlation between compassion fatigue and satisfaction. Only intrinsic human factors were significantly correlated to burnout, work engagement, compassion fatigue and satisfaction. Our preliminary findings suggest that certain intrinsic factors increase work engagement and compassion satisfaction amongst doctors. As some of these intrinsic factors also appear to buffer against burnout and compassion fatigue, increasing work engagement and compassion satisfaction not only builds individual resilience against burnout and compassion fatigue but may also lead to improvement in overall health, professional quality of life and career longevity for doctors.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.