Managing burnout in the workplace

Abstract

The term “burnout” itself was proposed by the American psychologist H. J. Freudenberger in 1974 to describe the disappointment in the work performed among employees of psychiatric institutions: the longer the staff worked there, the less they liked communicating with patients, the less they felt they were successfully working and the less sensitive their attitude towards patients became. According to Freudenberger, burnout is “a loss of motivation and decreased activity in the workplace.” Loss of interest in work is the most obvious consequence of burnout. Subsequently, it turned out that this condition is also found in other specialists working in the healthcare system.