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Influence Of Personal Functioning And Behaviour Type On Burnout Among Public Health Workers
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The
term “burnout†was identified thirty years ago to describe a state of
fatigue and frustration among health and service workers arising from
excessive demands on their resources. According to Maslash & Leiter
(2008) is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal
stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimension of
exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy. Leiter & Maslash (2009) also
saw it as a cumulative negative reaction to constant occupational
stressors relating to the misfit between workers and their desired jobs.
with this understanding it can be deciphered that burnout is a
psychological syndrome response to chronic stressors in the work place
that leads to, physical & emotional exhaustion, cynicism and
detachment and feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
Exhaustion is mainly related to an individual’s experience of stress,
which is in turn related to a decline in emotional and physical
resources.
According to Leiter & Maslack (2003).
“The experience of exhaustion reduces worker’s initiative while
progressively limiting their capacity for demanding work†while cynicism
refers to a detachment from work in reaction to the overload of
exhaustion, and the burnout component perceived professional inefficacy
refers to the feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of achievement
productivity at work and also lack of confidence in one’s work. Most
workers in the health sector have encountered occupational stressors in
their working environment that often makes them care professionals such
as the Doctors, Nurses, lab scientists, pharmacists, social workers and
psychologists (Leiter & Malash 2009).
When an
individual is psychologically burned out due to occupational stress and
depression, frustration set in the working environment and this affects
the individuals psychological, physical and mental wellbeing. The nation
of wellbeing is examined in two aspects, those being subjective
wellbeing and psychological well-being, subjective well-being
corresponds to the hedonistic view predicting the individual’s elusion
from pain and approach to pleasure, while psychological well-being
corresponds to ensuring the individuals personal development and
realizing one’s potentials, going beyond the search of pleasure which
include psychological and spatial health (Shanhun, 2010).
In recent years increasing attention has been paid to the phenomenon of
burnout particularly in human service professions, psychological
burnout appears to be a response to interpersonal stressors on the job,
in which an overload of contact with people result in changes in
attitudes and behaviors towards them (Schaufeh, Leiter & Maslash
2008). Burnout can show up as poor job performance, impersonality with
patients and lack of motivation. Health problems such as high blood
pressure, insomnia, depression or addiction can also be sign of burnout
and it’s as a result most people in the health care professions carry
their job home with them; it’s good to really care about your patients.
But if you don’t know how to distance yourself at times, it will be a
problem “(Synder,2007).
Also burnout which is as a result
of prolonged stress in the work place, is globally considered as a risk
factor for worker’s health and safety. More specifically the health
care, sector is a constantly changing environment, and the working
conditions in the hospitals are increasingly becoming demanding and
stressful .Several studies; studies focusing on the health sector have
shown that health care professionals are exposed to a variety of severe
occupational stressors, such as time pressure, low social support at
work, a high work load, uncertainty concerning patient treatment and
predisposition to emotional responses due to exposure to suffering,
frustration, depression anxiety and anger, and in this case health care
workers are at a high risk of experiencing severe distress, burnout and
both mental and physical illness . (Peterson, Demerouts, Bergstom,
Samielsson, Asbsg, & Nigren, 2008).
According to
Demerouti, Bakker, Nachrainer & Schaufele (2001), the syndrome of
burnout is more prevalent among human service providers. The two core
dimensions of burnout can be distinguished as emotional exhaustion and
depersonalization. Burnout is a syndrome characterized by emotional
exhaustion that results in depersonalization and decreased personal
accomplishment at work. The emotional exhaustion clinicians may develop a
sense of cynical detachment from work and view people, especially
patients as objects, such that clinicians no longer feel effective at
work because they have lost sense of their ability to contribute
meaningfully in the past few years, the growing prevalence of burnout
syndrome among health care personal has gained attention as potential
threat to health care quality and patient safety.
Burnout
is common among health care workers and the characteristics of the
health care environment contributing work processes, role conflict and
poor relationship between groups and with leadership, when these are
combined with leadership and personal disposing factors and the
emotional intensity of clinical work, they put clinicians at risk.
Burnout is viewed as a threat to patient’s safety because
depersonalization is presumed to result in poorer interaction with
patients, clinicians aremore likely to subjectively rate patient’s
safety lower in their organization and to admit having mistaken or
delivered standardized care at work.
Burnout complaints
among nurses have not been consistently related to occupational species
stressors such as confrontation with death and dying and interactions
with difficult situations. More specifically, psychological burnout has
three syndromes which are emotional, depolarization and a reduced sense
of personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work
with people in some capacity. As described above, burnout is studied in
three different types, “emotional" this refers to over extended and
drained by one’s contact with other people†depersonalization “this
refers to an unfeeling and callous response towards people who are
usually the recipients of one’s service or care and reduced personal
accomplishment†this refers to a deadline in one’s feeling of competence
and successful achievement in one’s work with people. These three
aspect of syndrome have been the causes and outcomes.
Burnout individuals simultaneously experience high levels of chronic
fatigue, and distance themselves emotionally and cognitively from their
work activities employees with higher levels of burnout are more likely
to experience a hold range of psychological and physical health problems
including anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, memory impairment
(Peterson, Demerouts, Bergstom, Samielsson, Asbsg, & Nigren, 2008).
Consequently, burnout employees are likely to display one or more
withdrawal behaviours such as lateness, absence or turnover according to
(Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001). Clinically, burnout employees
may get justified absence leaves from work. However other burnout
employees remain at work which leads to a form, existence more
psychological and physical health problems, and this influences their
behavior at work in a significant way.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study investigated influence of Personal functioning and Behavior type on burnout among public health workersâ€. Two hundred and thirty-one (231) health workers comprising of Hundred and one (101) males (44.5%) and Hundred and twenty-six (126) females (55.5%) were selected from hospitals in Uyo metropolis. Participants were selected using convenient sampling technique. Their age ranged between 18 and 62 years with a mean age of 38 years. Maslach Burnout Inventory -General survey (MBI-GS ... Continue reading---
