A narrative review of research on healthcare staff’s burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: During the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, burnout emerges as a critical health problem that might involve workers in many occupations, particularly healthcare personnel. Although burnout syndrome is not necessarily proved to be nosologic, it yields serious physical, mental, and social outcomes. However, it is essential to provide practical strategies and effective instruments for people so that they can adapt to such highly stressful conditions. OBJECTIVES: The present review was conducted to explore preliminary evidence for nature, treatment, and prevention of burnout among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Related English literatures published from the beginning of January 2020 to the end of September 2020 were searched in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google scholar databases. “Burnout,” “COVID-19,” “healthcare workers,” “medical staff,” and “pandemic” constituted the search terms. A narrative technique was implemented for material synthesis and creating a compelling and cohesive story. RESULTS: Final results provided the burnout history and its major effects, causes, and prevalence among healthcare workers. Also, some strategies were listed to be employed by hospital medical staff and organizations to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Recent evidence demonstrated that healthcare staff could gain significant benefits from interventions to modify burnout syndrome, especially from organization-directed interventions. So, health policymakers and practitioners should adopt such interventions and develop context-specific approaches promoting a healthy workplace and averting burnout during the COVID-19 crisis.