Job Burnout: New Directions in Research and Intervention

Abstract

Job burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job and is defined here by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and sense of inefficacy. Its presence as a social problem in many human services professions was the impetus for the research that is now taking place in many countries. That research has established the complexity of the problem and has examined the individual stress experience within a larger social and organizational context of people's response to their work. The framework, which focuses attention on the interpersonal dynamics between the worker and other people in the workplace, has yielded new insights into the sources of stress, but effective interventions have yet to be developed and evaluated.