Introduction
The COVID‐19 pandemic is a global public health emergency with tremendous consequences for people’s lives and their mental health. On 2 March 2020, Portugal announced the first confirmed case of SARS‐CoV‐2. On 9 May 2020, 26,715 cases of COVID‐19 were recorded. One month later, the number of cases was confirmed as 35,910 with more than 1500 deaths.
Burnout and psychological distress seem to have been some of the immediate effects of the pandemic on health professionals，In this pandemic scenario, fear of COVID‐19 contagion seems to be an exacerbator of distress and has been found to be associated with negative mental health outcomes
2. Discussion
Exposure to COVID‐19 patients had significant effects while the independent variable on all burnout dimensions. This result indicates that HCW who were in contact with infected patients were more likely to experience personal burnout, work‐relatedburnout, and client‐related burnout. This result highlights the need for organizations to develop protective strategies [14,21,22] in order to support these professionals in dealing with emergency situations. Attention to self‐care needs is foundational for effective coping and cognitive functioning [2]. All of these findings in the present study contributed to the understanding of the relationship between resilience, depression, and burnout, and verified the fact that resilience is a tool for combating burnout among HCW.
3. Conclusions
HCW living in Portugal experienced a high prevalence of burnout. After adjusting independent variables (e.g., sociodemographic and context variables), depression was positively associated with burnout dimensions and negatively associated with resilience. Furthermore, resilience could partially mediate the relationship between depression and dimensions of burnout. Considering that a second wave of infections is already happening and that there is a rise in workload in a context of doubt and insecurity, it is expected that burnout and depression might worsen. The solution will require increased funding for mental health, particularly for professionals who report symptoms of psychological distress (depression, anxiety).
