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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1541892
This article is part of the Research Topic World Mental Health Day: Mental Health in the Workplace View all 5 articles

Prevalence and contributory factors to burnout in the New Zealand surgical specialist and registrar population

Provisionally accepted
Jhanvi Dholakia Jhanvi Dholakia *Anantha Narayanan Anantha Narayanan Nicholas Smith Nicholas Smith
  • Waikato District Health Board, Hamilton, New Zealand

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Burnout is a growing phenomenon amongst medical professionals due to ageing patient populations and an increasing burden of chronic disease, in a resource constrained environment. We aim to quantify the prevalence of burnout in surgical specialists and registrars at a tertiary centre in New Zealand and identify contributory factors, using a New Zealand based tool, the McEwan Burnout Questionnaire. Of the 110 people surveyed, 55% respondents had concern or high risk of burnout. Contributory factors were frustration with management, lack of resources and long working hours, with predominance towards fatigue and service provision over career progression amongst the registrar group. Bullying and harassment were reported more in the sub-specialty groups. More time in private practice appeared to be associated with less concern for burnout. These high rates of burnout require targeted interventions towards contributory factors to protect our workers and to maintain a sustainable workforce.

    Keywords: Surgery, burnout, Workforce, stress, McEwan Burnout Questionnaire, wellbeing, Resilience Greep NC, Woolhandler S

    Received: 12 Dec 2024; Accepted: 03 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Dholakia, Narayanan and Smith. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jhanvi Dholakia, Waikato District Health Board, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.