**2. Measuring burnout**

Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the most widely accepted standard for burnout assessment. It includes a Human Services Survey applicable to healthcare professionals.

MBI is comprised of 22 items, out of which emotional exhaustion domain consists of nine items, depersonalization domain consists of five items, and accomplishment domain consists of eight items. Each domain scored from 0 to 6 based on self-reported frequency of the feeling addressed by each item.

Conceptions of burnout that address only emotional exhaustion are incomplete [7, 8] as depersonalization may actually align more strongly with the most negative consequences of burnout [9].

As studies on physicians have often found the personal accomplishment domain of burnout to correlate only weakly with outcomes, overall burnout has commonly been defined as a high level of either emotional exhaustion or depersonalization. Main drawback of using MBI outside of structured research studies is its length. For larger survey, a short assessment tool is developed and used in some studies.

One study of more than 10,000 medical students and physicians found strong correlations between single item tool and their respective emotional exhaustion and depersonalization domain scores from the full MBI, and area-under-the-curve measures of 0.94 and 0.93, respectively, against the full MBI domains [10].

In addition, replacing the full MBI with these single items in physician studies yielded similar estimates of burnout. Many physicians have applied this shorter version of tool in different burnout studies. Alternative abbreviated assessments have been proposed. McManus applied a shortened MBI using three items from each domain, but validity of this approach is lacking.

The Physician Work Life and MEMO studies use a single item, "how severe is my burnout", on a scale of 1–5 [11].

This indicates Correlations with the emotional exhaustion domain of the full MBI have been demonstrated to be moderate. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory [12] and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory [13] are also examples of tool developed as a response to debate concerning the optimal conceptualization of physician burnout. However, despite ongoing efforts to refine burnout instruments, the MBI remains the current "gold standard" for burnout assessment, with the full MBI representing the preferred version when possible.

*Occupational Stress among Health Care Workers DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107397*
