Summary:
Introduction: Burnout is a major problem in the modern work environment.
Although this phenomenon is mainly considered in professional groups such as
physicians and nurses, other professional groups, such as psychologists and teachers,
also experience high rates.
Objective: To comparatively examine burnout and empathy in a sample of
psychologists and teachers.
Methodology: For the purpose of the study, 60 psychologists and 60 teachers were
administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory and Empathy Quotient questionnaires,
which assess empathy and burnout, respectively. Based on this burnout assessment
tool, burnout is composed of three dimensions, which are emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization and sense of personal accomplishment. Participants were recruited
through the internet and the measurements were answered on a Google Forms form.
After collecting 120 completed responses, the participants' data were entered into
SPSS to be analyzed.
Results: The total burnout score was higher for teachers than for psychologists
(p=.000), but no significant differences were found in the three individual dimensions.
Empathy did not differ significantly between the two groups (p=.956). Empathy was
statistically significantly related to participants' emotional exhaustion (r=-.534,
p=.000), depersonalization (r=-.557, p=.000) and sense of personal accomplishment
(r=.531, p=.000), although there were no statistically significant relationships with
overall burnout (r=-.238, p=.000).
Conclusions: It is possible that the pressures placed on the educational system over
the past few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic were proportionately higher than
the pressures psychologists faced in their professional environment, dynamics that
may account for the higher levels of overall burnout in teachers. Given that the
individual dimensions of burnout were related to empathy, it would be useful to use
this to implement interventions for psychologists and teachers to reduce the negative
impact of burnout.
Keywords:
burnout, empathy, psychologists, teachers
