Burnout of Physicians, Pharmacists and Nurses in the Course of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Serbian Cross-Sectional Questionnaire Study

Jakovljevic, Biljana; Stojanovic, Katarina; Nikolic Turnic, Tamara; Jakovljevic, Vladimir Lj.

This research was a prospective, cross-sectional observational study of 128 health workers in the central part of the Republic of Serbia. The study surveyed health workers (physicians, pharmacists and nurses) who worked during peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Serbia in June and November 2020. The Maslach Burnout Survey for Medical Personnel addresses three scales: (a) emotional exhaustion (EE) measures feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one’s work; (b) depersonalization (DP) measures an unfeeling and impersonal response toward recipients of one’s service, care treatment, or instruction; and (c) personal accomplishment (PA) measures feelings of competence and successful achievement in one’s work. Linear regression and the chi-square test were used to test a relationship between the input variables (x) and the single output variable (y). We can conclude that most health workers had a high degree of emotional exhaustion, but also a low degree of depersonalization and a high degree of sense of personal achievement. Nurses and physicians had similar answers on the pandemic during their work, but pharmacists had different answers.