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Objectives: To determine the prevalence of the professional burnout syndrome in health care personnel of different Intensive Care Units (ICUs). To know the association between burnout, its dimensions and sociodemographic-laboral variables. To compare the dimensions of burnout, characteristics of the personnel and of the patients of the different ICUs., Material and Methods: Analytic, comparative, cross-sectional study performed in the ICU of a tertiary hospital in November 2006 performed in a sample of 289 professionals. The Maslach Burnout Inventory questionnaire and sociodemographic-laboral variables were provided. The following were evaluated in the ICUs: Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS), Nine Equivalents of Nursing Manpower Use Score (NEMS), mortality, stay, isolations and travel of third parties. The chi2 test, Fischer test, Kruskall-Wallis test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used., Results: A total of 73% of the workers answered. Ages ranged from 37 +/- 9 and 81% were women. The prevalence of burnout was 14%, this affecting 16% of the nurses, 14% of residents, 13% physicians and 10% auxiliary workers. Burnout was associated to low professional satisfactions, relationship with regular colleagues, low work recognition and time worked and experience in the ICU to high emotional tiredness, with a p < 0.05. In a polyvalent ICU, higher values of the following were obtained: TISS 42 +/- 11, NEMS 35 +/- 10, mortality 18%, stay 5 +/- 9, isolation 21%, burnout syndrome 17%, elevated emotional tiredness 49%, elevated depersonalization 63% and low professional performance 44%., Conclusions: The prevalence of the burnout syndrome in our sample was 14%, those being affected most being the nursing professionals. We detected elevated levels of depersonalization and middle levels of emotional tiredness and professional performance. The variables related with professional burnout syndrome were low professional satisfaction, relationship with regular colleagues, low work recognition, and elevated emotional tiredness in the more expert personnel. The ICU with the greatest prevalence of burnout during the month studied attended patients with greater TISS, NEMS, mortality, stay and isolations.