%0 Journal Article
%T Burnout among chiropractic practitioners: real or imagined an exploratory study protocol
%A Shawn Williams
%A Stanley Innes
%J Chiropractic & Manual Therapies
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2045-709x-20-4
%X Past research has sought to explore and quantify the elevated levels of stress and susceptibility to burnout found in the helping professions. This has been demonstrated in professionals that share many similar characteristics to chiropractic such as medical practitioners [1,2], dentists [3-5], nurses [6-9], physical therapists [10-15], and occupational therapists [16-18]. However, this subject has never been studied in the chiropractic profession.Factors that have been identified which increase levels of stress and susceptibility to burnout include constantly focusing on the needs of others, which may lead to fatigue, feelings of frustration and anger, a sense of ineffectiveness and failure, and the onset of depression and associated co-morbidities [2,19-22]. Other factors include physical workload, quality of recipient contact, physical environment, type of patient feedback, financial pressures and supervisor support [22]. These factors have been shown to vary across geographic locations [10-13,23].With this body of evidence available for comparison it would seem logical to explore those significant factors already identified. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate the need to explore burnout in chiropractic practice and to propose a research protocol for a potential study. Thus we would seek to question a representative selection of chiropractors from varying locations on their perceptions of the impact of these factors using an established and validated questionnaire.In 2008 there were 49,100 registered chiropractors in the U.S.; of these approximately 44% were self-employed [24]. While there is a trend of increasing numbers of chiropractors there is counter pattern of declining use of chiropractic. In the U.S., 9.9% of U.S. adults reported having seen a chiropractor in 1997 vs. 7.4% in 2002. This was the largest relative decrease among CAM professions, which overall had a stable use rate [25].Against this backdrop is the unfavourable public pe
%K Burnout
%K Chiropractic
%K Exploratory
%U http://www.chiromt.com/content/20/1/4