A study on burnout syndrome among school teachers in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Background: Burnout syndrome is an emerging occupational phenomenon which makes employees to feel exhausted or less interested on their job with a diminished outcome. Teaching is considered one such stressful occupation. So, this study was conducted to assess the magnitude of burnout among school teachers of Tamil Nadu and to determine the various factors contributing to burnout syndrome.Methods: Descriptive survey method was employed for the present study. A sample of 251 government school teachers was taken by using convenient sampling technique. Teachers’ burnout scale by Gupta and Rani was used to collect the data. The obtained data was statistically analysed using one-way ANOVA.Results: The magnitude of burnout was not high in government school teachers. However, the factors like working in high school, urban school, having spouse as a teacher, chronic illness and increased travel time to school, were found to be associated with higher burn out.Conclusions: Teachers have direct interaction with the students, shared responsibility with colleagues, adjusting with institutional conditions and handling various tasks and challenges put them at a high stress. Health system of India is having many health programmes in schools which are related student’s health but the teacher’s health is left behind. Screening teachers for stress, burnout and other occupational psychosocial hazard will help them improving their life and student’s education.