Burnout: The Risk of Physical Assault

Background/Purpose: Burnout is caused by the gradual depletion over time of an individual's physical, emotional and cognitive resources in response to ongoing stress. Teachers may over-react to disruptive and aggressive students with criticism and punishment; students may, then, become angry and defiant and attack teachers. Burnout, in teachers, is examined in this study as a possible risk factor for physical assault.

Methods: A nested case-control study of licensed Minnesota educators (n=290 cases and n=867 controls) examined burnout, using the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure Version 2, as a risk factor for physical assault. Cases reported at least one physical assault in the past 12 months and reported on exposures from the month prior to assault. Controls reported on exposures from a randomly selected period of time in which they worked. Potentially confounding variables were selected for multiple logistic regression analyses, using directed acyclic graphs; re-weighting adjusted for non-response and unknown eligibility biases.

Results: Compared to those reporting ‘Infrequently' experiencing feelings of burnout, the risk of physical assault was increased for those indicating ‘Always' (OR=2.64, 0.94-7.4),‘Frequently' (OR=1.71, 1.03-2.82), and ‘Sometimes' (OR=1.11, 0.77-1.61), and decreased for those indicating ‘Never' (OR=0.27, (0.07-0.93). Risk of physical assault increased for those educators in the 80th percentile scoring level compared to others (OR=1.71, 1.20-2.44).

Conclusions: Burnout was associated with increased risk of physical assault. This is a first step in examining violence as an outcome for burnout for this population, and serves as a basis for further in-depth research.