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Survey shows good quality of life, low burnout rate among ophthalmologists
European Glaucoma Society meeting attendees reported overall satisfaction with life in a questionnaire.
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Glaucoma specialists participating in a quality-of-life survey study reported satisfaction with their lives and low burnout levels, researchers found.
“People working in the medical field are frequently exposed to high levels of stress, being many times active for an amount of hours far above the 38 contractual hours per week,” Michele Iester, MD, PhD, the first author of the poster presented at the European Glaucoma Society congress, said in a telephone interview with Ocular Surgery News. “It could be very interesting to continue the research investigating the satisfaction of life and levels of burnout in other medical specialties, to draw comparisons with our results.”
The survey investigated a topic that is not often studied, Iester said, and was administered during the European Glaucoma Society congress in 2010. Each attendee was given an optional questionnaire placed inside a welcome pack and was asked to complete it by the end of the meeting.
The study was presented as a poster by Iester and colleagues at the European Glaucoma Society congress in Copenhagen this year.
Questionnaire
The first set of questions in the survey covered general demographics and was followed by more specific questions about quality of life.
In the second section, respondents were asked to rate on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) a series of statements aimed at measuring overall satisfaction with life.
The third section was a modified Maslach Burnout Inventory to assess emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal achievement in the context of work activity. Respondents were asked to rate how frequently they experienced feelings related to these categories on a scale from 0 (never) to 6 (every day).
The fourth part of the survey focused on family support, with questions evaluating positive and negative interactions with family and partners on a scale from 1 (never) to 5 (frequently).
By the end of the meeting, 164 completed questionnaires were returned.
Of the 164 respondents, 136 were clinical ophthalmologists, including 14 residents in training, 75 specialists, 35 consultant chairs, and 12 departmental heads and clinical professors.
The average participant age was 45 years, and 53% were men.
Results
According to Iester and colleagues at the University of Genoa and Moorfields Hospital in London, ophthalmologists completing the survey were satisfied with their lives. The mean life satisfaction score was 42.8 out of 49.
Family support was rated moderately, with an average score of 10.5 out of 15 for frequency of positive interactions and 7.6 out of 15 for negative interactions.
Iester said that the researchers found the results of the modified Maslach Burnout Inventory the most interesting, demonstrating that emotional stress and depersonalization levels were lower and personal achievement levels were higher for ophthalmologists than physicians as a whole. Only the ophthalmology residents in training had lower personal achievement scores than did physicians as a whole (30.9 vs. 36.5).
However, the researchers cautioned that the results may have been influenced by the location and conditions in which the questionnaire was administered.
“It would be useful to assess whether these results would be reproduced should the survey be undertaken at the respondents’ place of work rather than an ophthalmology meeting,” the study authors said. – by Timothy Norris
Michele Iester, MD, PhD, can be reached at Clinica Oculistica, University of Genoa, Viale Benedetto XV, 5 16132 Genova, Italy; email: iester@unige.it.
Disclosure: No products or companies are mentioned that would require financial disclosure.