Burnout among Male Physicians: A Controlled Study on Pathological Personality Traits and Facets

Abstract

There is a high prevalence of job burnout in physicians, impacting both the professional and personal levels. This study aimed to investigate whether physicians with burnout show specific pathological traits and facets of their personalities compared with healthy controls, according to the dimensional personality models in the ICD-11 and DSM-5. The role of perceived stress, anxiety, and depression were exploratively investigated regarding group differences. Male physicians (n = 60) were recruited into two groups (burnout vs. healthy). The Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 Brief Form Plus (PID5BF+) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) were applied. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test (WRS) showed group differences in five of the six traits and in six of the seventeen facets of the PID5BF+. Multiple binary logistic regression, controlling for age, showed that deceitfulness (3.34 (1.36–9.35), p = 0.013) and impulsivity (10.20 (2.4–61.46), p = 0.004) significantly predicted burnout. Moreover, the WRS showed significant group differences in perceived stress, depressive, and anxiety symptoms (all p < 0.00)]. The findings suggest a relationship between pathological personality facets and burnout in a sample of male physicians. In particular, the facets of deceitfulness and impulsivity appear to play an important role. Furthermore, burnout showed well-known associations with perceived stress, depressive, and anxiety symptoms.

Underutilization of effective coping styles in male physicians with burnout

“…With the exception of age and job satisfaction, the two groups showed very similar demographic characteristics (Table 1) [52]. Both groups were very similar in terms of body mass index, marital status, job status, years working as a doctor, working hours per week, providing emergency service and night work and employment, whereas the physicians in the burnout group were significantly younger (p = 0.022) and showed significantly lower job satisfaction (p = <0.001).…”

“…The present analyses are secondary analyses of the parent study "Effect of burnout on myocardial blood flow". Therefore, both the test for sufficient statistical power and the sample size were chosen with respect to the primary endpoint of the parental study [52].…”

“…The present analysis is a secondary analysis of a parental study on the "Effect of burnout on myocardial blood flow" with the primary aim to assess cardiovascular health in male physicians with burnout [52]. Approval was obtained from the local ethics committee Zurich (BASEC-Nr.…”

“…As a novelty, this study examined two clearly separable groups, male physicians with burnout and male physicians without burnout as controls [52]. This allowed us to specifically examine the extent to which the above delineated coping styles can predict burnout in physicians, controlling for age, because age has been shown to relate to coping styles [53,54].…”

“…We assumed that distraction-oriented coping predicts the burnout group and social-diversion-oriented coping the healthy control group. These are secondary analyses, and as a consequence of the parental study and its biological outcomes (which are published elsewhere), only male physicians were studied [52]. In addition, our study took place in part during the Covid-19 pandemic, when physicians were particularly challenged and coping with stress was especially important for their wellbeing.…”