Burnout as a clinical entity--its importance in health care workers

Burnout, viewed as the exhaustion of physical or emotional strengthas a result of prolonged stress or frustration, was added tothe mental health lexicon in the 1970s, and has been detectedin a wide variety of health care providers. A study of 600 Americanworkers indicated that burnout resulted in lowered production,and increases in absenteeism, health care costs, and personnelturnover. Many employees are vulnerable, particularly as theAmerican job scene changes through industrial downsizing, corporatebuyouts and mergers, and lengthened work time, Burnout producesboth physical and behavioural changes, in some instances leadingto chemical abuse. The health professionals at risk includephysicians, nurses, social workers, dentists, care providersin oncology and AIDS-patient care personnel, emergency servicestaff members, mental health workers, and speech and languagepathologists, among others. Early identification of this emotionalslippage is needed to prevent the depersonalization of the provider-patientrelationship. Prevention and treatment are essentially parallelefforts, including greater job control by the individual worker,group meetings, better up-and-down communication, more recognitionof individual worth, job redesign, flexible work hours, fullorientation to job requirements, available employee assistanceprogrammes, and adjuvant activity. Burnout is a health careprofessional's occupational disease which must be recognizedearly and treated.