Associação da educação nutricional com a Síndrome de Burnout em servidores da secretaria de estado de educação do Distrito Federal

Abstract

The teaching job is considered to be one of the most stressful, with evident repercussions on physical, mental health and professional performance, which inflicts on large long-term medical licenses. Most of these medical licenses of the educators of the greatest government agency of Distrito Federal (DF), the Education State Secretary (ESS), is caused by psychiatric disorders, and amongst them the Burnout Syndrome (BS) is highlighted, considered a physical and mental exhaustion of work. So, the objective of this study was to associate a Food and Nutrition Education program to ESS / DF teachers who had or who were vulnerable to BS by the suggestive scale of this kind of problem, with the improvement of symptoms and quality of life at work. It was consisted from an almost-experimental study, with evaluation of the results in the first moment and after the nutritional education activity, once a month, during four months, to a final number of 18 teachers. Descriptive reviews of the data were performed and the BS scale was analyzed using the McNemar test, used in paired nominal data, and the Mann-Whitney test for paired samples in program R v3.4 was used for the Quiz of Food Consumption Frequency (QFCF), considering the significance level of 0.05 and a Confidence break of 95%. The study was carried out at the ESS / DF and the protocol was approved by the Ethics and Research Committee of the Research and Teaching Foundation in Health Sciences. Although the data from the scientific literature indicates the relationship of healthy alimentation in its nutritional aspects of vitamins, minerals and other substances essential for mental health as being positive, no statistically significant changes were noticed in the BS scale outcomes and in the post-intervention QFCF, p-value equal to 0.434. Previously to the intervention, all teachers were at any of the three initial BS levels with 6 teachers at each level and with a low amount of animal protein consumption, mainly from fish and seafood, which are also sources of good fats, such as omega 3, omega 6 and minerals like magnesium, essential nutrients for mental health. In addition, there was a high consumption of fats by refined oils, considered of low nutritional value. The results suggest that it is necessary to work with instruments of food behavior variances, having the support of a multiprofessional team and with weekly meetings, both in groups and in individual appointments. It is also crucial that the Nutrition and Food Education (NFE) activity takes place in a more relaxed and comfortable environment, outside of office hour, to contribute with better results, given the peculiar characteristics of those who have BS.