OBJECTIVE

Studies investigating the relative importance of effort-reward imbalance and work-privacy conflict for burnout risk between professional groups in the health care sector are rare and analyses by educational attainment within professional groups are lacking.

METHODS

The study population consists of 1422 hospital employees in Switzerland. Multivariate linear regression analyses with standardized coefficients were performed for the overall study population and stratified for professional groups refined for educational attainment.

RESULTS

Work-privacy conflict is a strong predictor for burnout and more strongly associated with burnout than effort-reward imbalance in the overall study population and across all professional groups. Effort-reward imbalance only had a minor effect on burnout in tertiary-educated medical professionals.

CONCLUSION

Interventions aiming at increasing the compatibility of work and private life may substantially help to decrease burnout risk of professionals working in a health care setting.