Beyond Workplace Pressure: Coping Skills, Emotional Intelligence, and Burnout among Healthcare Professionals in Pakistan

The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between coping skills, occupational stress, burnout, and emotional intelligence of healthcare professionals. It also examined the mediation of the relationship between coping skills and two work outcomes, namely, occupational stress and burnout, through the lens of emotional intelligence. The method used in this study was quantitative, the design used was cross-sectional. The sample comprised of 300 healthcare workers employed in public and private hospitals of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. A demographic information sheet, the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, the Coping Skills Scale, the Workplace Stress Scale and the Brief Emotional Intelligence Scale were used to gather data. SPSS-22 was used for descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and mediation analysis by using PROCESS Macro Model 4. Occupational stress significantly negatively correlated with coping skills, indicating that the better the coping skills of health care professionals, the lower the level of occupational stress. The association for coping skills, however, was comparatively small and positive, suggesting a more complex association. Emotional intelligence was significantly and negatively correlated with burnout, and was not significantly correlated with coping skills or occupational stress. Both coping skills and occupational stress and burnout were found to be significantly predicted by regression analysis. The results of mediation analysis showed that there was no significant mediation between emotional intelligence and the relationship between coping skills and occupational stress, coping skills and burnout. The results indicate that coping skills and emotional intelligence are psychological resources that are attended to by healthcare professionals, but these are not necessarily linear or sequential. Emotional intelligence is more of an independent protective factor against burnout than a mediator between coping and burn-out outcomes. The study emphasizes the importance of individual level psychological intervention and organizational change with regard to workload, institutional support and role specific stressor in the Pakistani healthcare context.