Exploring Age, Gender and Moral Injury as Determinants of Burnout among Healthcare Providers in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

A review of available literature on burnout suggests that many existing studies primarily focus on workload, organizational stressors, and job satisfaction in healthcare, while the moral and ethical conflicts that contribute to these issues remain undocumented. The aim of this study therefore was to determine the influence of moral injury and sociodemographic variables on burnout among healthcare service providers in Lagos state, Nigeria. Purposive and convenient sampling methods were adopted to select 210 healthcare service providers (91, 43.3% medical doctors and 119, 56.7% nurses) from two tertiary health institutions in Lagos state who completed measures of moral injury and burnout. Hypotheses were tested with the simple linear multiple regression and independent t-test statistics. Results indicated a significant positive influence of moral injury on burnout. Also, there was a significant difference in the self-reported burnout between doctors and nurses. However, age, gender and number of years in service were not significant predictors of burnout, either jointly or independently. The study inferred that the presence of moral injury in healthcare providers is a potential high-risk factor for burnout, and that doctors exhibit higher rates of burnout than the nurses, with no recourse to their age or gender or how long they have spent in their respective profession. The results have implication on the poor quality of service delivery by healthcare workers who experience moral injury and burnout on a consistent basis. Patients may be deprived of the required care due to burnout symptoms exhibited by healthcare workers.