Objective  To explore the relationship among occupational stress, job burnout and depressive symptoms of medical staff in Guangzhou, and to provide theoretical guidance for promoting their physical and mental health.

  Methods  The occupational stress, the job burnout and the depressive symptoms of 1 545 medical staff from 3 hospitals in Guangzhou were surveyed with the Basic Situation Questionnaire, the Pay-Return Imbalance Questionnaire, the General Job Burnout Scale and the Patient Health Questionnaire Depression Scale. A multiple linear model was constructed by the stepwise regression with occupational stress as independent variable, occupational burnout as mediator and depressive symptoms as dependent variable to evaluate their relationship.

  Results  The average age of these medical staff was(34.2 ±8.8) years old and their employment time was(7.6 ±6.8) years. The dimensions scores of pay, return and internal input in occupational stress were 3.0 ±0.8, 3.9 ±0.6, and 2.5 ±0.8, respectively. The mean of effort-reward imbalance(ERI) index was(0.8 ±0.4) and 308 medical staff (19.9%) were diagnosed with high occupational stress basing on the ERI model. The job burnout score was 1.8 ±1.1;the dimension scores of emotional exhaustions, depersonalization, job satisfaction were 2.2 ±1.6, 1.5 ±1.4, and 4.4 ±1.5, respectively. There were 133 medical staff (8.6%) suffering from job burnout. The depressive symptoms score was 7.8 ±4.5, and 391 medical staff (25.3%) with depressive symptoms were detected. Pearson correlation analysis showed that the job burnout was positively correlated with the pay and internal input of the occupational stress and the depressive symptoms (r_s=0.412, 0.542 and 0.667 respectively, P < 0.01). The depressive symptoms were also positively correlated with the pay and internal input of the occupational stress(r_s=0.436 and 0.542, respectively, P < 0.01), while it was negatively correlated with the reward of the occupational stress(r_s=-0.514, P < 0.01). Furthermore, multivariate linear model indicated that the occupational stress and the job burnout had significant predictive effects on depressive symptoms (P < 0.01), which could explain the changes of the depressive symptoms by 33.2% and 13.9%, respectively.

  Conclusions  In the group of medical staff in Guangzhou, occupational stress had a direct effect on depressive symptoms; as a negative result of occupational stress, job burnout played a partial mediating role in the effect of occupational stress on depressive symptoms. Relieving job burnout could alleviate depressive symptoms.