Evaluation of the Quality of Life of Anesthesiologists in the City of Recife

The practice of Anesthesiology is exhausting and stressful. The present study evaluated the quality of life of anesthesiologists working in the city of Recife, correlating the profile of the quality of life with the degree of satisfaction with their health, number of working days and weekly shifts, gender, and age group. The WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire was used. Spearman's correlation and Student t test, ANOVA, and Scheffé test for variance were used, considering a p < 0.05 significant. Subjective analysis demonstrated that 44.6% of anesthesiologists have a negative or undefined perception about their quality of life. The degree of satisfaction with their health (r = 0.525; p = 0.01) and the excess of weekly working shifts (p = 0.03) had a significant influence on the results. Female anesthesiologists had significantly lower scores than males in the subjective evaluation of quality of life and in the psychological and social relationships domains. A significant difference was not observed among different age groups. The environmental domain had lower scores than the others in all parameters analyzed. Long working hours represented a negative factor in quality of life of all anesthesiologists in the city of Recife, and that of female anesthesiologists was significantly worse than males. Therefore, we concluded that reflection and actions are required to influence positively the health and quality of life of those professionals. Besides individual actions, institutional support is fundamentally important for the practice of anesthesiology and, to achieve positive changes, decisions should be based on scientific evidence. A prática médica em Anestesiologia é atividade desgastante e estressante. Neste estudo, foi avaliada a qualidade de vida dos anestesiologistas que trabalham na cidade do Recife e relacionado o perfil de qualidade de vida com o grau de satisfação com a saúde, número de dias e turnos semanais trabalhados, gênero e faixa etária. Utilizou-se o questionário WHOQOL-BREF. Foram aplicados a correlação de Sperman e os testes t de Student, Anova e de variância pelo teste de Scheffé, adotando-se os valores de p < 0,05 como significativos. A análise subjetiva mostrou que 44,6% dos anestesiologistas têm percepção negativa ou indefinida sobre sua qualidade de vida. Apresentaram influência significativa nesse resultado, o grau de satisfação com a saúde (r = 0,525; p = 0,01) e o excesso de turnos semanais trabalhados (p = 0,03). As mulheres apresentaram escor