BACKGROUND

Happiness or subjective well-being includes people’s assessment of their own lives, reflexive cognitive judgments, emotional reactions to the current life, etc. Burnout is currently considered in the context of mental response to chronic work-related stress.

OBJECTIVE

To assess happiness in the context of life satisfaction, as well as emotional burnout of anesthesiologists and intensive care specialists.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

We used the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), Flourishing scale, Satisfaction with Life scale, Spielberger — Khanin anxiety scale, HADS scale. The respondents were asked to assess their emotional state, future, and presence of suicidal thoughts.

RESULTS

The study included 145 physicians (65.5% of intensive care specialists, 24.1% of anesthesiologists, 10.3% of nurses). Life satisfaction/happiness were below the mean values in intensive care specialists and anesthesiologists. On the other hand, nurses have a slightly higher level of life satisfaction/happiness. According to the Flourishing scale, intensive care specialists reported the lowest scores. Anesthesiologists led regarding percentage of respondents with low scores (65.7% vs. 57.9% and 40% among intensive care specialists and nurses, respectively). According to the MBI, 20% of anesthesiologists, 30.5% of intensive care specialists and 26.67% of nurses have high burnout scores on all three subscales.

CONCLUSION

Physician satisfaction with own work is important for health care system because it can affect the quality of medical care provided. Monitoring of satisfaction should underlie preventive measures in hospitals. Happiness is associated with many benefits including improvement of medical care provided. Therefore, physicians need to incorporate the “right” attitudes into their practice and, if necessary, work through negative emotions and fears with a psychologist.