Development of burnout syndrome among veterinarians: An assessment using the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the burnout syndrome among Serbian veterinarians across different veterinaryfields using the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI). Moreover, possible risk factors associated with thedevelopment of burnout levels in this population were also studied. The explanatory and confirmatory factoranalysis revealed two-factor solutions from the three original CBI domains, explaining a total of 65.5 % varianceamong the investigated veterinarian population. The first factor, which explained 56.3 % of the variance, waspredominantly defined by personal burnout, with high loadings ranging from 0.931 to 0.779. The second factoraccounted for 9.2 % of the variance and was primarily characterized by client-related burnout (loadings between0.942 and 0.580). Items from the work-related burnout domain of the original CBI showed cross-loadings on bothfactors, reflecting its overlap with personal and client-related dimensions. Therefore, personal/work-related andclient/work-related domains were identified in the investigated veterinarian population. The common risk factorfor two defined types of burnout was a decreased number of vacation days per year, 1–10 days. Working inscience had a protective effect on the development of burnout syndrome compared to the small practice.Establishing a protective buffer through a series of activities at the individual and organizational levels,increasing vacation days in our case, could help contain or prevent burnout syndrome among the veterinarianpopulation