BURNOUT NOS PROFISSIONAIS DE UM CENTRO DE RESPOSTAS INTEGRADAS

Burnout is defined as physical and emotional tiredeness resulting from chronic workplace stress. Healthcare professionals dealing with addictive behaviours and dependencies have higher risk of suffering burnout. Relaxation techniques can be used to reduce workplace stress. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the eficacy of relaxation techniques in preventing/reducing burnout levels of healthcare professionals working in Centro de Respostas Integradas (CRI) de Viseu. This is a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group study with pre- and post-test was applied to a sample of 18 healthcare professionals (control group n=9; study group n=9). A therapeuthical relaxation programme was implemented among the study group and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory – PT scale was applied. In the pre-test, 22.2% of the workers presented burnout. The medium total burnout index was 37.35 (± 23.76). In the post-test, the study group showed statiscally significant reduction of total (p=0.013), personal (p=0.011) and workplace related (p=0.010) burnout indexes. Patient related burnout was also reduced, although the difference was not significant. Our study found a statistically significant relation between therapeuthical relaxation and burnout levels’ reduction in workers of CRI Viseu.