Burnout Syndrome in Higher Education Teachers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70577/asce.v5i1.628Keywords:
Occupational Stress, Mental Health, University Teachers, Psychosocial Risks, Higher Education, Professional Exhaustion.Abstract
Burnout Syndrome constitutes one of the most prevalent psychosocial risks among teachers in Higher Education Institutions in Latin America; This narrative literature review aimed primarily to determine the factors associated with this syndrome in university professors from the region. To this end, SciELO, Redalyc, PubMed, Dialnet, and Web of Science databases were systematically consulted, selecting peer-reviewed publications from 2014 to 2024, inclusion criteria prioritized empirical studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses with samples of at least 50 participants and a focus on prevalence, psychosocial factors, or consequences in university contexts.
The findings indicate prevalence rates ranging from 41% to 70%, with emotional exhaustion as the dominant dimension (reaching up to 84% in health sciences fields), followed by depersonalization (26.9% to 49%) and low personal accomplishment (7.7% to 32%); the most consistent demographic and occupational factors include age under 40 years, female gender, less than 10 years of job seniority, low salaries, quantitative and qualitative workload overload, simultaneous administrative and teaching roles, and instruction under competency-based models (particularly hybrid curricula), the COVID-19 pandemic acted as an extreme stressor that significantly exacerbated these dimensions, mainly through the abrupt shift to emergency remote teaching, associated technostress, doubled screen time, and the blurring of boundaries between work and family life.
From the perspective of the Job Demands-Resources Model, burnout emerges from a chronic imbalance between high job demands and insufficient organizational and personal resources; in conclusion, this syndrome is not an isolated issue of individual resilience but an organizational pathology induced by precarious structural conditions in the university environment, these findings provide updated scientific evidence that can serve as a foundation for designing institutional strategies to prevent and mitigate occupational stress among higher education teachers.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Dayanna Shakira Benavides Cueva, José Ignacio Eras Ceron, Jenniffer Betzabeth Montoya Alcivar, Andrea Carolina Espinoza Fernández, Priscilla Lizbeth Pérez Jaramillo
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