Researchers to study burnout among female health-care workers

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the long-standing issue of burnout among health-care workers - a problem that will be studied in depth by a University of Toronto research team. Prior to 2020, severe burnout - characterized by intense emotional exhaustion and decreased professional achievement - was found in 20 to 40 per cent of health-care workers in Canada, according to a brief prepared for Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. By spring 2021, rates of severe burnout surged to more than 60 per cent of Canadian doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals. Moreover, data from Statistics Canada show in the fourth quarter of 2020, job vacancies in health occupations rose by 28,000, which accounts for more than one-half of the overall increase in job vacancies compared with the year before. "Seventy-five per cent of health-care workers are women, and there is a huge supply-and-demand issue right now in the health-care workforce," says Abi Sriharan , an expert in health human resources and director of the System Leadership and Innovation program at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Sriharan, an assistant professor at IHPME, adds many female health-care workers are leaving their occupation or moving away from front-line care. The exodus of female health professionals could lead to poorer quality of care, longer wait times and more medical errors, she says.