Professional issues
Janetta Bensouilah in Pregnancy Loss, 2021
Although a certain amount of stress is to be expected when working in an emotionally charged field, when stress becomes cumulative (seeBox 8.1), extreme or exceeds an individual’s ability to cope, burnout may result. Burnout syndrome is the exhaustion of the body’s normal mechanisms for coping with stress. It can occur in those who work with people in a caring capacity, and is defined as a response to prolonged exposure to demanding interpersonal situations. It is characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a reduced level of personal accomplishment.3 In the context of practitioners, emotional exhaustion is said to occur when the practitioner is overwhelmed by their work, and is considered to be the first stage of burnout. Depersonalisation refers to impersonal feelings towards patients in one’s care – that is, behaving as a carer but not feeling caring – and reduced personal accomplishment refers to the feeling that nothing that they do makes any difference, or that it remains unappreciated.
The Work Landscape
Ezra E. H. Griffith in Belonging, Therapeutic LANDSCAPES, and Networks, 2018
Rakesh, Pier, and Costales (2017) reviewed several main factors that contributed to resilience: finding value in the process of being and becoming a physician; building life outside of work so that work and life are balanced; and staying interpersonally engaged in supportive relationships. Other factors mentioned were: cultivating hobbies; using work opportunities for growth and reflection; prioritizing tasks and taking time-out periods; and maintaining boundaries with patients and colleagues. Besides those factors just listed, which are proposed as promoting attitudes of resilience, there are clinical interventions recommended for those experiencing burnout or who are at risk for it. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is one such intervention, as is mindfulness-based stress reduction that promotes relaxation and sensation awareness. It is hoped that integration of these two forms of intervention will help at-risk caregivers to develop the capacity to be empathic towards their patients without becoming overwhelmed by their emotional responses. Clinicians should therefore remember that burnout is treatable and there are practical methods that may be used to help individuals change their attitudes and behaviors in the workplace to stave off development of burnout syndrome.
Integration with the Interdisciplinary Care Team
Amy J. Litterini, Christopher M. Wilson in Physical Activity and Rehabilitation in Life-threatening Illness, 2021
One of the most underestimated but important roles of the interdisciplinary care team is to serve as a ‘support group’ for each other. Burnout syndrome is the chronic long-term emotional distress of healthcare professionals providing care for those in challenging health situations and is a concern in PC (see Chapter 5).11 An additional concept is compassion fatigue, where providers who are working with those who are suffering often experience emotional consequences to providing care, termed the ‘cost of caring.’12 An inverse term to compassion fatigue is the concept of compassion satisfaction, where healthcare providers experience “emotional rewards of caring for others in a health care context; clinicians feel a sense of return or incentive by seeing a ‘change for the better’ in patients and families.”12 Best practices for addressing burnout and compassion fatigue include participating in mindfulness, meditation, and creative writing, of which effectiveness was established in a randomized controlled trial.13 A mixed-methods study in Portugal cited the impactful role of the IDT in protecting against burnout, which may lend credence to the benefit of shared decision-making and the ‘support group’ concept within the IDT.14 In addition to the clinical benefit of supporting team members during difficult times, a therapist providing emotional support and encouragement firmly establishes him or her as a valuable member of the team.
Burnout syndrome prevalence during internship in public and private hospitals: a survey study in Mexico
Published in Medical Education Online, 2019
Roberto Carlos Miranda-Ackerman, Francisco José Barbosa-Camacho, María José Sander-Möller, Arturo David Buenrostro-Jiménez, Roberto Mares-País, Ana Olivia Cortes-Flores, Gilberto Morgan-Villela, Carlos José Zuloaga-Fernández del Valle, Manuel Solano-Genesta, Clotilde Fuentes-Orozco, Guillermo Alonso Cervantes-Cardona, Gabino Cervantes-Guevara, Alejandro González-Ojeda
Burnout syndrome is a psychological condition characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment, which translates to inefficient job performance. It has been associated with high-stress jobs, jobs that involve taking care of people, and jobs with long working hours; by definition, it is a common problem among health professionals and caretakers [1]. Burnout syndrome is studied and identified by three different dimensions: emotional exhaustion, which measures feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by the work; depersonalization, which measures an unfeeling and impersonal response towards the person receiving treatment or service; and personal accomplishment, which measures feelings of competence and achievement in the person’s work [2].
COVID-19 psychological impact during the Italian lockdown: A study on healthcare professional
Published in Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 2021
Calogero Lo Destro, Corinna Gasparini
Taken together, these results seem to clearly indicate the risk for health professionals to experience high levels of stress that, if left untreated, may result in burnout syndrome. As stated by Maslach (1982), burnout can occur in almost any profession, but it is more prevalent in some fields, such as: social work, police work, teaching and healthcare professionals (nurses, psychologists, etc.). Specifically, the prevalence of psychological and physical symptoms has been found among physicians and nurses, across many countries and several medical specialists (e.g., Hamid & Musa, 2017; Hannan et al., 2018; Kluger, Townend, & Laidlaw, 2003). In this field, burnout may induce several negative effects, such as lower quality of care provided to patients, increased rates of medical errors (e.g., Shanafelt et al., 2010; West, Tan, Habermann, Sloan, & Shanafelt, 2009), decrease in professional work effort (Shanafelt et al., 2016), increased absenteeism and intention to leave (Bobbio & Manganelli, 2015). From previous research, both work-related factors (e.g., organizational support, feeling of insecurity in the workplace, dealing with difficult patients) and individual psychological variables (e.g., coping strategies, work engagement, avoidance, distress) have been found to affect vulnerability to burnout (Hamid & Musa, 2017; Grassi & Magnani, 2000; Marjanovic, Greenglass, & Coffey, 2007; Thomsen, Soares, Nolan, Dallender, & Arnetz, 1999).
Effects of an adjunctive, chronotype-based light therapy in hospitalized patients with severe burnout symptoms - a pilot study
Published in Chronobiology International, 2019
Markus Canazei, Daniela Bassa, Paulino Jimenez, Ilona Papousek, Andreas Fink, Elisabeth Weiss
The present study has some limitations. First, to date, there are no consensual diagnostic criteria for the burnout syndrome and the disorder is not yet included in clinical classification systems such as DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013) or ICD-10 (World Health Organization 1993). Therefore, in the current study diagnostics was based on the ICD-10 criteria of work-related neurasthenia and increased scores >3.5 on the exhaustion scale in the MBI-GS. Hence, the findings of our study might not be generalizable to clinical burnout patients that are diagnosed differently. Second, light intervention effects on sleep and daytime sleepiness were only measured with self-reported parameters but not objectively with polysomnography (Ekstedt et al. 2009) or actigraphy (Ancoli-Israel et al. 2003; Janurek et al. 2018). Third, the study did not include a placebo light condition. Fourth, no long-term effects of the treatment have been examined and, thus, sustained benefits of light treatment that go beyond the inpatient period remain unknown. Finally, the sample size was rather small and replication in larger samples is required before practical recommendations are justified.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Bed Rest
- Dependent Personality Disorder
- Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
- Dysthymia
- International Classification of Diseases
- Acedia
- Occupational Disease
- Neurasthenia
- Repetitive Strain Injury
- International Classification of Diseases
- Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
- Maslach Burnout Inventory