Are Groote Schuur Hospital anaesthesiologists burnt out?

Abstract

I read with interest the paper by Groenewald and colleagues, who studied the prevalence of the burnout syndrome among anaesthetists working in the Groote Schuur Hospital.¹ Having ourselves published a burnout survey among SASA members, involving 498 respondents in a previous issue of the SAJAA,² we are particularly interested in comparing the findings of the two studies. Fortunately, both studies employed identical survey instruments and the same cut-off thresholds for classifying scores into high, moderate and low score categories. However, we should bear in mind that our survey preceded that of Groenewald and coworkers. Thus certain Groote Schuur anaesthetists may have participated in both studies, and statistical comparisons will be invalid.