Emotional burnout syndrome in healthcare professionals

Abstract

   Currently, one of the most pressing concerns of labor psychology and healthcare is emotional burnout in healthcare professionals. During the COVID- 19 pandemic this condition has become very significant due to it takes a lot of physical, phychoemotional and ethical commitment of medical personnel. Emotional burnout is a syndrome that derives from chronic stress and leads to the depletion of personal, emotional, and energy resources of a person in the professional life. It is an dynamic sequential process and relevant to stress stages (the alarm stage, the resistance stage and the exhaustion stage). There are many various factors inducing the burnout syndrome: social, political, economic, bureaucratic, etc. In the process of studying this phenomenon, different models of emotional burnout were proposed. The most famous model is the three-part model of burnout by С. Maslach, which includes emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a decrease in personal achievements. In Russia V. V. Boyko has been studying the burout phenomenon. There are three main stages of emotional burnout (alarm, resistance and exhaustion), which have a close connection to stress stages; each stage has a specific combination of symptoms. According to a number of authors, burnout syndrome is closely related to empathy, therefore, it is necessary to study the relationship between the level of empathy and the degree of emotional burnout in healthcare professionals for planning further psychological support for the prevention of this syndrome.