Burnout and Medical Errors in the Anaesthesiology Fraternity During Covid-19 Pandemic

Burnout and Medical Errors in the Anaesthesiology Fraternity in an Exclusively Covid-19 Hospital: the Malaysian Experience

We plan to perform an observational study to evaluate the prevalence of burnout, depression and medical errors in a designated exclusive Covid-19 patients hospital in Malaysia, during the Covid-19 pandemic. We also seek to assess the relationship between burnout and depression with medical errors. The population studied will be the anaesthesiology fraternity, who are at higher risk to the nature of their work at the frontlines of the pandemic.

During this unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic crisis in the whole world, Malaysia is also affected, with more than 5000 patients infected in the whole country as of 20th April, 2020. Many anaesthesiology clinicians, who are at the frontlines of managing Covid-19 patients, face increased workload, in addition to psychological stress from managing these patients, with stress also coming from being exposed to the risk of cross infection. Hence, they are possibly at high risk of burnout and depression. In such a time of increased stress, we also seek to find out the prevalence of medical errors by anaesthetic clinicians during this pandemic, and whether the medical errors are associated with burnout. Factors associated with burnout, depression and medical errors will also be evaluated.

Inclusion criteria

1. All anaesthesiologists and anaesthesiology medical officers currently serving in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Sungai Buloh Hospital

Exclusion criteria

1. Subjects who refuse to participate
2. Subjects working in Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Sungai Buloh Hospital, for less than 1 month