Understanding the links between burnout and GPs health: insights from the conservation of resources theory
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Drawing on the Conservation of Resources theory (COR, Hobfoll, 1989, 2001) this study aimed at investigating four general hypotheses regarding the links between burnout and GPs’ health. These are: burnout will be positively associated with their suicidal tendency (Hl); will be positively associated with their addictive behaviours (H2); will be negatively linked to their physical health (H3) and will mediate the relationships between burnout/ suicidal tendency and burnout/addictive behaviours (H4).
The COR theory posits that individuals are motivated to obtain, retain and protect their “resources”. Resources have been defined as “objects, personal characteristics, conditions and energies that are valued by the individual or that serve as a means for attainment of these objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies” (Hobfoll, 1989, p. 516). Such resources are necessary for individuals to “create a world that will provide them plea sure and success” (p. 516). Consequently, stress arises when these resources are threatened, lost or unsuccessfully invested to gain another resource.
In line with the COR theory, burnout has been defined as “an affective state character ized by one’s feelings of being depleted of one’s physical, emotional and cognitive energies” and “follows prolonged exposure to stress” (Shirom & Melamed, 2005, p. 603). These emotional, physical and cognitive energetic resources are used by people to fulfil their pro fessional duties and to cope with situations that potentially threaten what they value (Hobfoll & Shirom, 1993). Accordingly, burnout results from chronic exposure to the threat of valued resources (objects, conditions or personal characteristics), which necessi tates investing all available energetic resources during a (too) long period without succeed ing in protecting or recovering the threatened resources. Because resource conservation or recovery requires investing other resources (Principle 2 of COR theory), if individuals do not have a strong resource pool, they are less likely to succeed in resource conservation or recovery (Principle 2 corollary 1). Thus, the individual could be engaged in a “spiral of losses” (corollary 2), given that losing one kind of resource increases the likelihood of the subsequent loss of other resources if work demands remain at a too high level. This “spiral of losses” hypothesis has received growing empirical support (e.g. Armon, Shirom, Shapira, & Melamed, 2008; De Cuyper, Makikangas, Kinnunen, Mauno, & De Witte, 2012).