Management Strategies to Avoid Professional Burnout

Professional burnout is one of the significant factors affecting the productivity of the workforce. This has become more common during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the decrease in the psychological safety of employees. Working from home can also negatively affect work-life balance, leading to burnout. Undetected and untreated burnout leads to a decrease in worker productivity and eventually depression and other psychological problems. It is important to create and monitor working conditions to prevent professional burnout. Preventing burnout is always easier to achieve than treating the damaging symptoms. This paper will examine the factors contributing to professional burnout as well as some strategies for mitigating professional burnout. The article identifies the factors of occupational burnout after the COVID 19 pandemic based on the experiences of employees from Poland and the USA. The aim of the work is to indicate the first results of research in the field of occupational burnout, which are conducted on the basis of surveys. The questionnaire summary was prepared according to the model of research on burnout in relation to the pandemic situation. The presented results concern research for both production and service companies. And they are the basis for recognizing the factors responsible for occupational burnout for these employees.

Personal variables that buffer against the development of burnout in public school teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Teaching is one of the most emotionally exhausting careers due to high demands and workload, insufficient resources and supports, and student behavior management (Day et al., 2007;Demerouti et al., 2001;Trait, 2008). Increased stress related to teaching makes teachers highly susceptible to developing burnout, a psychological state characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of accomplishment (Maslach et al., 2001). Burnout in teachers is associated with lower levels of student achievement as students are directly impacted by the environment around them, including teacher well-being (Yavuz, 2009). With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting schools since March of 2020, teachers have been asked to adapt to challenging circumstances in their professional and personal lives. Research is limited on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted teachers' psychological well-being and the development of burnout in this population (Sokal et al., 2020). Variables have been found in the literature that protect against burnout, and some are explicitly associated with teachers. Optimism, intrinsic motivation, and social support are variables that have been found to protect against burnout in the teaching profession (Hassan et al., 2017;Otero-Lopez et al., 2014;Tornuk & Gunes, 2020). In the current study, the researcher aims to expand on research regarding burnout in teachers related to the COVID-19 pandemic and whether personal variables that have previously served as a buffer against burnout have remained protective in the pandemic. Support was provided for the relationship between burnout and the resiliency variables intrinsic motivation, optimism, and social support. Within this sample, individuals who presented with greater levels of these resiliency variables were less likely to demonstrate high levels of burnout. Perceived stress was also examined and accounted for the most variance in burnout in this sample, suggesting that stress levels were high in the sample. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES TO AVOID PROFESSIONAL BURNOUT

Professional burnout is one of the significant factors affecting the productivity of the workforce. This has become more common during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the decrease in the psychological safety of employees. Working from home can also negatively affect work-life balance, leading to burnout. Undetected and untreated burnout leads to a decrease in worker productivity and eventually depression and other psychological problems. It is important to create and monitor working conditions to prevent professional burnout. Preventing burnout is always easier to achieve than treating the damaging symptoms. This paper will examine the factors contributing to professional burnout as well as some strategies for mitigating professional burnout. The article identifies the factors of occupational burnout after the COVID 19 pandemic based on the experiences of employees from Poland and the USA. The aim of the work is to indicate the first results of research in the field of occupational burnout, which are conducted on the basis of surveys. The questionnaire summary was prepared according to the model of research on burnout in relation to the pandemic situation. The presented results concern research for both production and service companies. And they are the basis for recognizing the factors responsible for occupational burnout for these employees. © 2022, Czestochowa University of Technology. All rights reserved.

Personal variables that buffer against the development of burnout in public school teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Teaching is one of the most emotionally exhausting careers due to high demands and workload, insufficient resources and supports, and student behavior management (Day et al., 2007;Demerouti et al., 2001;Trait, 2008). Increased stress related to teaching makes teachers highly susceptible to developing burnout, a psychological state characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of accomplishment (Maslach et al., 2001). Burnout in teachers is associated with lower levels of student achievement as students are directly impacted by the environment around them, including teacher well-being (Yavuz, 2009). With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting schools since March of 2020, teachers have been asked to adapt to challenging circumstances in their professional and personal lives. Research is limited on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted teachers' psychological well-being and the development of burnout in this population (Sokal et al., 2020). Variables have been found in the literature that protect against burnout, and some are explicitly associated with teachers. Optimism, intrinsic motivation, and social support are variables that have been found to protect against burnout in the teaching profession (Hassan et al., 2017;Otero-Lopez et al., 2014;Tornuk & Gunes, 2020). In the current study, the researcher aims to expand on research regarding burnout in teachers related to the COVID-19 pandemic and whether personal variables that have previously served as a buffer against burnout have remained protective in the pandemic. Support was provided for the relationship between burnout and the resiliency variables intrinsic motivation, optimism, and social support. Within this sample, individuals who presented with greater levels of these resiliency variables were less likely to demonstrate high levels of burnout. Perceived stress was also examined and accounted for the most variance in burnout in this sample, suggesting that stress levels were high in the sample. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Preventing burnout: the role of personality and awareness in early career mental health professionals in acute settings

Burnout among health professionals had been increasing over the last decade, but amidst the global impact of COVID-19, burnout has contributed to a national health care crisis (Bednar, 2019;Sklar et al., 2021). Due to increased demand and patient acuity, entry-level mental health professionals (MHPs) in acute settings are specifically at risk (Morse et al., 2012;Simpson et al., 2018). Moreover, unique variables related to personality disposition and emotional vulnerability from trauma can create a predisposition for burnout (Alarcon et al., 2009). This study explored the impacts of personality and emotional awareness curriculum on managing stress amidst crisis work and minimizing burnout. This study used the Big Five Inventory-2-Short Form (BFI-2-S) personality measure and curriculum in the context of a semester long graduate level course that included emotional awareness training, stress-management strategies, and peer-to-peer process groups, to explore if clinical psychology doctoral students at a private university could increase emotional awareness and applicable stress management skills. The intervention group participated in the 15-week course, was tested pre- and post-intervention and at 4 month follow-up of work in rural emergency departments using the Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-18) and Emotional Self Awareness Scale (ESAS) and a qualitative questionnaire to assess for long-term efficacy. Results showed statistically significant differences in the total score of the ESAS, and in subdomains for Contextualization and Decision-Making with small to very large effect sizes. However, the changes were in the opposite direction than hypothesized. It appears that students reported more confidence in their emotional self-awareness at the beginning of the intervention than at the conclusion. We failed to find a significant difference in participants' ability to regulate difficulty emotions (DERS-18) and yielded only small to no effect size. The paired sample t-test comparing subjective reports found statistically significant increase in their confidence to manage emotions with a large effect size between T1 and T2. A repeated measures ANOVA failed to find significant difference, suggesting that changes between T2 and T3 were not retained. Although not statistically significant, results showed a moderate effect size in their confidence to maintain the use of the coping strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

An internal medicine residency's response to the COVID-19 crisis: caring for our residents while caring for our patients.

BACKGROUND: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, internal medicine residencies have had to develop new teaching strategies and attend to wellness concerns. Providing front-line care for patients in a time of widespread crisis while maintaining attention to training has created unprecedented challenges. OBJECTIVE: Our large community hospital based internal medicine residency sought to develop and evaluate a crisis response to the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic to meet our residents' educational and wellness needs. METHODS: In March 2020, our residency developed a crisis plan for functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic. A brief survey was sent via email to our 149 residents to obtain their evaluation of how well their needs were being met by this response. RESULTS: 92 (62%) residents completed the survey. 88% indicated their well-being needs were well met. Other components were also rated as successful: effective communication (86%), scheduling/staffing (78%), preparing residents for clinical service (77%), and educational needs (76%). CONCLUSIONS: Our residency crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic was favorably evaluated by our residents in meeting their training and well-being needs. In future work we plan to seek longer-term and more objective measures to assess how residents fare during these challenging times, and to use lessons learned to prepare for future crisis situations.