Burnout: A Review of Theory and Measurement

Summary & key facts

This paper is a clear review about burnout, which the authors say comes from long-term stress at work. They explain what can trigger burnout, which personal traits might change how likely someone is to get it, what harm it can do to people and to workplaces, and what actions and measurement tools exist to prevent or reduce it. The review also sums up new studies from a special journal issue that move the topic forward, and it notes that interest in work-related health grew during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key facts:

• The authors define burnout as an occupational problem that comes from chronic stress in the workplace.
• The review looks at risk factors that can trigger burnout and personal factors that might change how someone responds to those risks.
• It describes effects of burnout both for individual workers and for the organizations that employ them.
• The paper summarizes main actions that have been proposed to prevent or reduce burnout, without claiming one single solution works for everyone.
• The review lists the main tools researchers and practitioners use to measure burnout, including general tools and ones for specific jobs.
• The authors summarize contributions from a special collection of studies on occupational stress and burnout, saying these studies improve how we understand and study the problem.

Abstract

A growing body of empirical evidence shows that occupational health is now more relevant than ever due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This review focuses on burnout, an occupational phenomenon that results from chronic stress in the workplace. After analyzing how burnout occurs and its different dimensions, the following aspects are discussed: (1) Description of the factors that can trigger burnout and the individual factors that have been proposed to modulate it, (2) identification of the effects that burnout generates at both individual and organizational levels, (3) presentation of the main actions that can be used to prevent and/or reduce burnout, and (4) recapitulation of the main tools that have been developed so far to measure burnout, both from a generic perspective or applied to specific occupations. Furthermore, this review summarizes the main contributions of the papers that comprise the Special Issue on "Occupational Stress and Health: Psychological Burden and Burnout", which represent an advance in the theoretical and practical understanding of burnout.

Topics

Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout Stress and Burnout Research Workplace Health and Well-being

Categories

General Health Professions Health Professions Health Sciences

Tags

Applied psychology Artificial intelligence Biology Botany Burnout Clinical psychology Computer science Emotional exhaustion Identification (biology) Occupational burnout Occupational stress Perspective (graphical) Psychology

Conditions & symptoms

Burnout