Burnout is related to the psychology of a person. Burnout
is the result of long-term exhaustion due to heavy
workload. When an employee continuously works for a long time on
some project or assignment that he does not find interesting, in a
phased manner, he may start losing interest in the job and after some time
a situation may arises where he totally gets exhausted from work
and feels depressed. In the final stages of depression, an employee
totally loses his interest in the work. Such a situation is called employee
burnout. This generally affects professionals who have to perform
multiple tasks at the same time. High expectations without having
sufficient time to complete the work are some of the reasons responsible
for employee burnouts.
The working environment of hospitals is not considered pleasant
and this work environment plays a major role in either increasing or
decreasing the pressure that mounts on healthcare workers. There
are many factors responsible for high pressure on healthcare
workforce. Some of these factors are: patient satisfaction scores, competitive
performance edge, performance and productivity targets and overall
patient engagement scores. Health care is a high-demand,
high-stress, high-risk industry. It operates in
the 24x7x365 manner and mostly healthcare workers are involved
in matters of life and death. Healthcare workers have to continuously
work with other people at the emotional level. Healthcare workers get
attached emotionally to the patients when they treat them for a
long time. They have to see a lot of things that normal people don't want
to see. All these things have a great impact on the emotional
wellbeing of healthcare workers. There are various organizational factors
that increase work pressure. These include: vague job description, lack
of proper induction and training of employees, lack of
reward-recognition and lack of clarity on career progression in the
organization. Burnout in health care sector is more serious than other sectors,
as healthcare workers have to deal directly with other people's lives.
So, a `burnout' employee can pose a serious threat to a
patient's life. Hence, it is important for
hospitals to take care of their healthcare workers. |
