Recognising and avoiding burnout

Reflective pause

What strategies have you found effective in managing or preventing burnout?

Health and social care practitioners are at particular risk of burnout, which is a state of mental and/or physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). Burnout has three components:

• Emotional exhaustion: feeling over-extended and drained of emotional and physical energy – ‘I just can’t do this job any longer’.

• Depersonalisation/cynicism: active disengagement from one’s job and negative attitudes towards colleagues or people accessing services – ‘I feel that I treat some people I work with impersonally’.

• Decreased sense of accomplishment: poor sense of achievement and loss of purpose – ‘Maybe I am not cut out for this type of work. I’m just not good enough’.

Burnout can seriously impair practitioners’ physical, mental and social wellbeing and compromise the quality of care or service provided. It is therefore crucial to identify the early warning signs of burnout and the likely causes to take remedial action. Some key symptoms of burnout are highlighted below:

How can you tell if you are burning out?

• Cognitive changes: Difficulty making decisions; lack of concentration; increased cynicism, criticism and suspicion of others; doubts about one’s own competence.

• Emotional changes: Anger and frustration; anxiety and fear; feelings of meaningless and being under-valued; loss of enjoyment of work and sense of doing a good job.

• Physical changes: Insomnia and fatigue; unexplained symptoms such as headaches; increased vulnerability to illness.

• Social changes: feeling alienated from other people; feeling isolated.

• Behavioural changes: Lack of empathy; loss of sense of humour; depersonalising people; self-medication with food, alcohol or drugs.

Common causes 

• Chronically high workload; fast pace of work; long working hours.

• Lack of resources and poor support from managers and colleagues.

• Unclear job expectations.

• Stretching yourself too thinly.

• Poor work-life balance; no opportunities to recover from work demands.

• Weak boundaries; over-involvement in work.

• Perfectionism; idealism; a rescuing tendency.

See here for more information on burnout in health and social care and how it can be managed effectively. 

Many strategies included in the sections to support other FWBs (Particularly FWB5 Self-care and Wellbeing) will also be helpful.