Critique of Research Paper

[Name of the Authors]

Critique of Research Paper

Introduction

In the research paper titled “Burnout and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease”, the authors have researched the problem of burnouts and coronary heart disease. Burnout is a harmful affective medical condition that occurs to human beings. This condition consists of symptoms of physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion and cognitive weariness (Toker et.al, 2012). This research was conducted to study the link between coronary heart disease (CHD) and burnout incidence. This study also tests the possibility of this link between the two to be non-linear.

This study was done on a total of 9000 employees. These participants seemed to be healthy men and women. They worked as employees in various organizations. Their ages varied from 19 years to 67 years. These participants had come to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center for routine medical checkup. These participants were followed up for around 3 years and 4 months on average. The measurement technique used for measuring burnout of these employees was Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure.

Initial objectives and results

The author`s initial objectives include prospective evaluation of the link between coronary heart disease (CHD) and burnout incidence. This study aimed to evaluate the link between these diseases in a large group of seemingly healthy and fit employees. It aimed to find out whether basic levels of burnouts foretell incidence of CHD on variables such as depression, demographics and workloads risk factors. 93 cases of CHD were recognized in the study. Employees who had high levels of burnout had a higher risk of developing CHD whereas those having lower burnout levels had a lower risk of developing CHD.

The authors used a valid measure to make assessments of this study. This burnout is measured by the SMBM (Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure). The possibility of link between burnout and CHD was explored by the authors with the help of past studies (Paddock, 2013). Those studies were done on the association of burnout and health outcomes that were negative, such as musculoskeletal pain and clinical insomnia. These studies concluded that people who had high burnout scores (upper quintile) were at higher risk for such medical disorders as compared to those who had a low score on burnout (that is lower four quintiles).

Critique

The author has provided a short literature review. In this, the author has included the result of previous study which was done on Americans who worked for long hours and used to take less holidays. They also used to retire much later in their lives as compared to the workers of various other industrialized countries. These studies suggest that majority of such workers experience burnout relating to their jobs. This results in cognitive, emotional and physical exhaustion.

The factors that contribute to job burnouts include high stress levels, heavy workloads, uncontrolled job work, inadequate support from colleagues or supervisors and prolonged working hours. Author has discussed that other studies have also associated job burnouts with obesity, insomnia, cardiovascular and anxiety risk factors. He has also included the conclusion of a national survey which ...