Burnout Status of Health Care Personnel Working in Oncology and their Coping Methods

Background: Working in oncology leads health care personnel (HCP) to feels stress, lack of satisfaction and to have psychological and physical problems and to be unproductive, estranged from job and to experience burnout. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine burnout state and the coping methods in HCP working in oncology. Methods: Interview Form, Maslach Burnout Inventory and Ways of Coping Inventory were administered total 444 HCP. Results: At the result of study HCP scored 1.76 in emotional exhaustion, 1.05 in depersonalization and 2.25 in lack of personal accomplishment [score range: 0-4]. These scores demonstrate that HCP experience moderate level burnout. It was established that HCP utilize mostly search for social support approach (X: 2.04) and they were least frequently found to use submissive approach (X: 0,97) [range: 0-3] in coping with burnout. It was established that, for emotional exhaustion nurses, other HCP who are consider their income inadequate and feel they have excessive work load form a risk group and for depersonalization with high education level, males, physicians, other HCP who are find their income inadequate run higher risk. It was also found that physicians and HCP with higher level of education, HCP who are feel themselves under excessive work load have a higher risk of experiencing lack of personal accomplishment. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that it was not possible to avoid burnout in oncology clinics. The administrators should rapidly put into effect projects and regulations which may protect personnel from burnout.