Burnout as an Important Factor in the Psychophysiological Responses to a Work Day in Teachers

Burnout syndrome is an important psychosocial risk in the job context, especially in professions with a strong social interaction, as in the case of teaching. This study analyses the role of burnout in the psychophysiological responses to a work day in teachers. High burnout was related to worse mood, and higher perceived stress throughout the work day. Moreover, burnout is positively related to systolic blood pressure and negatively related to salivary cortisol levels at the beginning of the work day. Higher scores of burnout in teachers are also related to lower heart rate in the middle of the work day. The psychophysiological responses to a work day are specifically associated with the different burnout subscales (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment). Men presented higher diastolic blood pressure than women at the beginning and the middle of the work day. Burnout could induce an alteration in mood together with a dysregulation of the cardiovascular activity and the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical axis functioning in response to a work day in teachers. Moreover, our results offer different burnout-dependent patterns of relationships between psychological, cardiovascular and cortisol responses, and they suggest that gender plays a moderator role in the cardiovascular response to a work day. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.