Prevalência de Burnout em profissionais de saúde no enfrentamento da COVID-19: uma revisão sistêmica

Abstract

Mental illness has become a matter of public interest, given its high prevalence, and its impact on quality of life and absenteeism of the population. The rapid spread of the pandemic by the coronavirus, the high number of victims, the unfavorable working conditions, and the physical exhaustion of the health professionals who worked and still work facing the virus, from primary care to the ICU, raised important questions about the physical and emotional well-being of these professionals. Burnout Syndrome (BS) is the prolonged response to chronic stress experienced mainly at work and it is known that healthcare professionals are highly susceptible to developing this syndrome, because they deal with intense emotions, excessive workloads and stressful situations in their daily routine. The present study aims, through a systematic literature review, to survey the prevalence of burnout syndrome in healthcare professionals who were in the front line of the fight against the COVID-19 virus. To this end, a comprehensive search for studies addressing burnout syndrome in healthcare professionals during the pandemic by COVID-19 was conducted in PubMed and SciELO databases. The search strategy was defined following PRISMA and COCHRANE recommendations. The duplicate screening, eligibility and data extraction steps were performed in Excel® software spreadsheets, in cases of disagreement, a third reviewer was consulted. After the screening and eligibility process, 26 cross-sectional studies were included. The main outcomes found corroborate the variation of the mean scores in the three dimensions of burnout according to the professional area, place and public affected. Most of the studies evaluated pointed out nursing professionals as being one of the most affected populations, with higher prevalence of compatible scores in the three dimensions of burnout syndrome. Moreover, it was observed that female individuals suffer up to 60% more from burnout syndrome when compared to males. The data from the present review allows us to infer that more effective measures need to be taken regarding the mental well-being of these professionals. Improvements related to infrastructure and availability of individual and collective protection equipment, reduction of the workload and demand required, as well as psychotherapeutic support through actions, groups and other therapies, are among the main measures indicated as prevention for physical and emotional exhaustion.