Burnout and Job Satisfaction in the Emergency Department Staff: A Review Focusing on Emergency Physicians

Training and the procedure of emergency medicine are stressful attempts that put doctors of emergency medicine at the risk for burnout. Burnout syndrome leads to negative results for patients, institutions and the doctor. This review article was conducted with purpose of exploring burnout and its associated factors in the emergency department staff, especially emergency physicians. Emergency physicians have higher levels of burnout compared with doctors in general. Employees in emergency department complain about higher role overload because of shortages in critical staff, budgetary cuts and higher number of patient and acuity. Overload like this might compromise satisfaction of the staff with their job environment. Both jobrelated (work hours, years of experience, activities for professional development, non-clinical tasks, etc.) and non-job-related factors (age, gender, lifestyle factors, etc.) are correlated with burnout. Job-related stressors have been stated to be related to higher risk of depression and suicide, intra-personal conflict and aggressiveness, as well as lower working performance and staff self-confidence, low quality of healthcare and lower experience and skill level among the staff. In conclusion, no enough data exits on prevention of burnout among emergency department nurses and physicians and new studies should be done. Factors that cause burnout in various emergency medicine populations should be evaluated, and proper interventions should be designed to lower burnout.