burnout

1. According to Maslach, burnout is a syndrome characterized by emotional
exhaustion, depersonalization and a low level of personal accomplishments,
which primarily affects people who are somehow dealing with other people in
their work.
Burnout develops as a response to the chronic emotional strain, which
is the result of dealing with other people and especially with people who cope
with serious problems. Thus, burnout could be considered as a type of
professional stress, which results from the social interaction between the person
who provides help, and the person who receives that help.
Nurses are particularly susceptible to the development of burnout, mainly
because of the nature and the emotional demands of their profession.
It is related to the deterioration of relationships between the nurse
and the patients, the coworkers, the family and the social environment.
Additionally, burnout has been closely related to both the absenteeism of nurses
from work and abandoning nursing. Finally, the nursing burnout results in poor
patient care.
Among the reasons contributing to the development of burnout are the
following:
1) The time that nurses spend for the patients care.
2) The contact with patients having a poor diagnosis.
3) The contact with patients having increased emotional demands.
4) Work load.
5) Ambiguity and role conflict.
6) Lack of support on the part of the supervisor and colleagues.
7) Lack of job satisfaction and
8) Fear of death.
Very important for the development of burnout are also the personality
characteristics of the individual, his motivations for having chosen a humanistic
profession, his expectations from himself and the others, his values, his self-

2. esteem, his ability to express his feelings, the control he exerts over the events,
and the others, and his personal style.
It is said, that some people are more stress resistant, and thus less vulnerable to
the development of burnout.
There are differences in the degree of burnout experienced by nurses working in
different fields. This may be attributed to the conflicts among staff, to the
decreased expertise of the workers, and to the work overload.
The nursing personnel who were working in emergency departments
experienced significantly higher levels of emotional exhaustion and
depersonalization in comparison to nurses of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and
other specialties.