Abril - 2017

onzález

-S

ánchez

362

ssoc

ras

2017; 63(4):361-365

nomic Community of Extremadura. Participants were

physiotherapists working in the region.

Inclusion criteria were: to be in active employment

since the January 1, 2010 and to have been working at

least one year, in a public or private practice. Exclusion

criteria were: to be in sick leave at the moment of data

collection or to not meet the inclusion criteria.

Procedures

To take part in the study, each participant was sent an en-

velope by regular mail, including: two questionnaires, one

being the Maslach Burnout Inventory

(MBI) and the oth-

er a sociodemographic and working variables questionnaire

(SDLVQ); an informed consent with a cover letter; and the

instructions. A pre-paid postage envelope was also sent for

document return.

Instruments

SDLVQ: It consists of a general-purpose questionnaire

specifically made for the study performance. It collects

sociodemographic and working characteristics of the sub-

jects. MBI:

It is a questionnaire where the subjected is

asked a series of questions on feelings and thoughts relat-

ed to his or her work interactions. It consists of 22 items

that are assessed by a Likert-type scale. The subjects are

assessed through a range of six adverbs of frequency, from

“never” to “daily” for each of the described by the items.

The three subscales of the MBI

are constituted by

three factors: EE, Dp and LPA at work.

Since our study assesses BOS in physiotherapists, the

scale used will be the MBI-HSS, addressed to healthcare

professionals, which is considered the classical version of

the MBI,

because it was the first to be elaborated. This

scale consists of three subscales that measure the fre-

quency in which professionals perceive EE. The profes-

sional feels he cannot give more of himself during his

working time, in the emotional dimension or in the af-

fective one. Moreover, they experience feelings of loss of

hope, defencelessness, physical and psychological weakness,

Dp, as well as a negative attitude towards patients, a de-

humanized vision of the patient, a feeling of LPA, negative

self-evaluation in respect to his work performance, a feel-

ing that the work is not worth the trouble and since noth-

ing can be changed at work it is not worth trying anything

new. This dimension, LPA, constituted as a reversed way

to the other two dimensions (EE and Dp), has been crit-

icized by some authors, because it can be a cause of dis-

agreement among studies. Recently, working with items

that assess inefficiency at work has been proposed as an

alternative to reverse the non-efficacy items of the MBI.

Moreover, some studies

have defended that while EE and

Dp are clearly interrelated, LPA seems to be an independent

and parallel variable, more related with the context “self-

efficacy,” which is a modulator of BOS. However, in our

study we have used the dimension LPA.

BOS is classified in its three dimensions as: low, mod-

erate and high level, according to the score achieved in

each subscale.

Statistical analysis

Data was analyzed using SPSS 19.0 software. A value of

p<0.05 was adopted for statistical significance. One hun-

dred and fifteen (115) professionals were studied in all.

Significant correlation between joint numeric response

(EE, Dp, LPA and total MBI) and the 18 categorical vari-

ables were searched by carrying out MANOVA test. The

categorical variables that did not provide significant result

in MANOVA weren’t considered in the rest of the study.

For the remaining categorical variables and for every com-

ponent of MBI, ANOVA with Bonferroni method and

Student’s t-test were applied in order to understand the

meaning of those correlations. Correlations between cat-

egorical variables as well as correlations between the com-

ponents of MBI were also considered.

esults

The sample included 584 physiotherapists at first, and

22.43% of them replied a total of 131 questionnaires. Af-

ter having applied inclusion and exclusion criteria, the

sample remained in 116 subjects.

After carrying out the MANOVA test for every categor-

ical variable, the only ones that provided significant results

(we understand this as proof of correlation between these

categorical variables and MBI) were: number of working

days per week, type of working day, number of hours of

direct attention to patients and family, number of pa-

tients and type of practice. The results are summarized

in Table 1. We emphasized averages that turned out to be

significantly higher according to ANOVA or Student’s t-test.

LPA is clearly higher in the case of split shift working

day as well as in private practice. Nevertheless, it can be

understood as a redundancy since both categories are

strongly associated, as we can see in Figure 1.

We can also note that more than 40 hours of direct

attention is linked to higher scores in EE, and that more

than 20 patients treated per day is associated with higher

scores both in EE and Dp. Curiously, none of these five

categorical variables, but number of working hours per week,

which is also correlated with type of practice (Figure 2),

provided any significant result for joint MBI. This fact can