A study of burnout and stressor-related factors among caretaker of children with chronic neurological illness
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Date
2020
Authors
Abdullah, Siti Ai'syah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Pusat Pengajian Sains Perubatan, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Objective: Caring for children with neurological condition is challenging. This study
aimed to determine the prevalence of burnout and its associated factors in caretakers of
children with chronic neurological illness.
Methods:Thiscross-sectional study involved 18 years or older caretakers of children
with neurological illness for more than 3 months duration. They were recruited from
Paediatric Neurology outpatient clinics over a period of 3 months from July to October
2019 at a general hospital inthe state of Kelantan, Malaysia. Each caretaker was given a
set of questionnaires, that included General Stressor Questionnaire (GSQ) which was
translated into Malay version ‘SoalSelidikUmum (SSU)’, Copenhagen Burnout
Inventory-Malay version (CBI-M) and Demographic Information Form.
Results: Two hundred and forty caretakers of children with chronic neurological illness
participated in the study. The mean age of caretaker was 38.12 years old (SD = 7.74).
Majority of them were female (82.1%), Malay (94.6%) and Muslim (95.8%). Mean age
of children with chronic neurological illness was 7.19 years old (SD = 4.21), and most
of them were male (60.8%) and had the illness for more than 5 years (38.3%).
Overall only 20 caretakers had mean score of 50 or higher in all component in
CBI-M, making the prevalence of total burnout among the caretakers of 8.3% (95% CI
= 5.2%, 12.6%). The prevalence of burnout differs for each domain. Personal burnout involved 78 caretakers (32.5%, 95% CI = 26.6%, 38.8%), 42 caretakers with clientrelated
burnout (17.5%, 95% CI = 12.9%, 22.9%) and 11 caretakers had work-related
burnout (4.6%, 95% CI = 2.3%, 8.1%).
The highest prevalence of personal burnout was among caretakers of children
with genetic illness (60.0%, 95% CI = 26.2%, 87.8%), followed by cerebral palsy
(43.5%, 95% CI = 31.0%, 56.7%) and autism (37.5%, 95% CI = 18.8%, 59.4%). The
highest prevalence of total burnout was among caretaker of children with genetic illness
(30.0%, 95% CI = 6.7%, 65.2%), followed by intellectual disability (20.0%, 95% CI =
0.5%, 71.6%) and autism (16.7%, 95% CI = 4.7%, 37.4%).
Most common stressors were performance pressure, work-family conflict and
poor job prospect. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that family stressor,
types of children’s neurological illness and number of household occupants were
associated with personal burnout, client-related burnout and total burnout in their
caretakers.
Conclusions: Prevalence of total burnout among the caretakers were low, but personal
burnout was prominent. Caretakers of children with genetic disorder, cerebral palsy and
autism had higher prevalence of burnout compared to other chronic neurological illness.
Description
Keywords
Pediatric nursing