Loading...
1 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
- Mindfulness trait in Portuguese AnaesthesiologistsPublication . Lapa, Teresa Alexandra Santos Carvalho; Viana, Joaquim Manuel Vieira da Silva; Gouveia, José Pinto; Oliveira, José António Martinez Souto deBackground: Anaesthesiology is a stressful occupation where physicians experience intense stress and have a great number of emotional demands. Professional stress and emotional demands can lead to burnout syndrome and psychopathology. Both interfere not only with the individual well-being of physicians, but also with the quality of medical practice, safety of patients, health costs and the well-being of families and colleagues. Emotion regulation processes seem to play a determinant role in the development and maintenance of burnout and psychopathology. The ability to reduce stressors in the workplace is limited after a certain point by the inherent characteristics of the medical profession and of some specialities, including anaesthesiology. In consequence, as it is proved that the effects of stressors are different from person to person, to attain health benefits our attention must also be directed to the mechanisms by which the stressors produce their effects on the professionals exposed. To this end, our first task was to develop a tool to measure stressors in anaesthesiologists. An extensive number of tools are available to measure burnout, anxiety, depression, quality of life and all the other possible consequences of stressors in professional settings. If we want to develop practical measures to blunt the effect of stressors, a logical need are instruments to measure the stressors (otherwise it would be impossible to know if different effects are consequences of different stressors or of the different strategies to blunt their effects). It is strange that, in a great number of published papers on this subject, in opposition to a large number of tools developed to measure stressors effects, no tool existed until our own study to measure stressors itself. Our next task was reach a better understanding of the mechanisms of burnout, discriminating between different types of stressors and studying emotion regulation constructs, evaluating the mediations between stressors and the final consequences (burnout and psychopathological symptoms). We paid particular attention to the relations between depression and burnout and the protective role of mindfulness trait. Necessary for the previous tasks, but also relevant in themselves, we obtained new or additional data about burnout on anaesthesiologists and other Portuguese medical doctors and its relations with age, gender, marital status, residency, years of experience and other demographic data. Additionally, we validated the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory for Portuguese physicians and developed a global burnout index. Methodology: Our studies were undertaken through the use of an anonymous paper survey to anaesthesiologists, anaesthesia residents and physicians from different medical specialties in Portugal. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaires, including demographic information, work experience, burnout and psychopathological symptoms, life satisfaction and emotion regulation processes (mindfulness, self-compassion, rumination and psychological inflexibility). Participants: The total sample was composed of 1358 Portuguese physicians of different specialities from the public and private hospitals. From these 637 were anaesthesia specialists and 115 anaesthesia residents. Results: Findings indicated that burnout scores were lower in anaesthesiologists when compared to other specialities, and anaesthesia residents had higher levels of burnout than anaesthesia specialists. Several socio-demographic and work-related variables predicted higher levels of burnout, namely being younger, higher workload and working in northern region. Working in the southern region and fewer than 40 hours per week predicted lower levels of stress. Professionals with no religion tend to suffer from greater levels of depression. Being an anaesthesia resident is related with higher levels of anxiety. Drinking more than 5 alcoholic drinks per week was a positive predictor of psychopathological symptoms and being a non-smoker is a predictor of less levels of burnout. Regarding stressors, our results showed that organizational stressors were the most important predictors of burnout. Regarding emotion regulation processes, we found that psychological flexibility, mindfulness trait, and self-compassion were related to less burnout and psychopathological symptoms. We found that job-related stressors impact on burnout through rumination and depression, and that mindfulness trait is a significant moderator of the association between rumination and depression. These results suggest that mindfulness buffers the negative impact of rumination on depression. Conclusions: This dissertation contributes to a greater understanding of the emotion regulation processes involved in the vulnerability to develop burnout and psychopathological symptoms. Our findings suggest that mindfulness trait functions as a buffering that mitigates the impact of rumination on depression. Overall, our studies give a rational basis to support the development of mindfulness and self-compassion based interventions to reduce burnout and psychopathological symptoms in anaesthesiologists.