Burnout and attachment in oncology and palliative care healthcare professionals.
Florbela GonçalvesMargarida GaudencioMiguel Castelo BrancoJoaquim VianaPublished in: BMJ supportive & palliative care (2024)
The constant exposure to the suffering of others places high emotional demands on oncology and palliative care professionals, making them vulnerable to burn-out. Burn-out is a multifactorial process, that involves individual characteristics with environmental effects. There are no significant differences between Oncology and Palliative Care professionals. Higher levels of personal, work-related and patient-related burn-out are associated with higher levels of anxiety. These results suggest that an anxious attachment style increases the risk of burn-out . In the sample, the most important predictor of burn-out was the number of hours per week exposed to suffering. In order to prevent burn-out, there is a growing evidence that suggests mindfulness, exercise, high-quality sleep and pursuit of happiness can improve burn-out in healthcare professionals. This work brings the advantage of using two burn-out assessment scales (particularly CBI scale), in addition to trying to correlate the level of burn-out and attachment in professionals exposed to suffering.