Who Burns out More? Comparison of Burnout Levels Between Teachers and Physicians in the Czech Republic

Despite burnout being considered primarily a syndrome related to medical professionals, it is now known that it affects a wider range of professions as well. It is seen as a state of complete physical, emotional, and cognitive depletion. In physicians, not only can burnout lead to work-related absenteeism but also it may affect their patients while teachers’ burnout may affect the mental well-being of their students. This study explored whether teachers have higher or comparable rates of burnout with the burnout rates of physicians. Furthermore, we compared them to the norms we established in the Czech Republic in the previous year. Cross-sectional data collection was utilized through a combination of multiple questionnaires. The questionnaires analyzed for the purpose of this study were the SMBM and BDI-II. Regardless of gender, physicians suffer from significantly higher burnout symptomatology when compared with teachers. These differences were found to be statistically significant. Furthermore, significant differences were also found between males with depressive symptomatology. We did not observe this difference in females. Our results suggest that, although burnout is a syndrome that appears regardless of profession, its manifestation can be quite different depending on the type of job. Overall, higher levels of burnout were found among female teachers compared with their male counterparts; between physicians, the situation was reversed; burnout affected more males than females. In all categories, more females were within the norm of Czech population. Nonetheless, the risk of burnout should not be underestimated in either of these professions.