Journal of Education and Health Promotion

Mental workload and occupational burnout among the faculty members and administrative staff of Yazd Public Health School

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

. Reza Jafari Nodoushan
. Farzan Madadizadeh 1
. Vida Sadat Anoosheh 2
. Fahima Boghri 3
. Khalil Taherzadeh Chenani 3

1 Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Research Center of Prevention and Epidemiology of Non‑Communicable Disease, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran

2 PhD Student of Ergonomics, Department of Occupational Health and Ergonomics, School of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

3 Occupational Health Research Center, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran

Abstract
BACKGROUND: Administrative staff may be exposed to a great deal of the mental workload (MWL)
due to the long working hours and the responsibility of responding to large numbers of clients.
Occupational burnout (OB) is one of the issues that can be affected by MWL. The aim of the present
study was to investigate the relationship between mental MWL and OB, as well as the internal
interactions between OB dimensions.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross‑sectional and descriptive (correlation) study was conducted
among faculty members and administrative staff of public health school of Yazd province. Samples
were collected through the simple random sampling. NASA task load index and Maslach questionnaire
were used for the assessment of MWL and OB, respectively. Frequency and percentage were used
for the descriptive analysis. Spearman, Mann–Whitney U, and Kruskal–Wallis H tests were used
for inferential statistics.
RESULTS: Ultimately, 29 individuals from faculty members and 82 individuals from administrative
staff participated in this study. Most of the participants (73.9%) had experienced many MWL instances
in performing their jobs duties. No significant relationship between MWL with OB and MWL with
any of the demographic characteristics was found, as well (P > 0.05). In case of OB, a significant
relationship was discovered between depersonalization with gender and personal accomplishment
with work section (P < 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS: MWL cannot be considered as a contributing factor of OB of the administrative
staff because no significant relationship has been noted between them. Reducing working hours,
selection of suitable staff, and allowing a few minutes to rest on a daily basis represent the suggested
solutions for reducing the MWL of staff.

Keywords

Administrative staff
Maslach questionnaire
mental workload
NASA task load index
occupational burnout
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Journal of Education and Health Promotion
Volume 11, Issue 7
August 2021
Pages 1-8

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