Burnout Use Research Articles

Protective overcoming behavior in naval professionals with signs of occupational burnout

Purpose. Evaluation of protective overcoming behavior in naval professionals with (or without) signs of occupational burnout.Materials and methods. The study enrolled 250 naval professionals aged from 25 to 45 years. Subjects were divided into two groups — without (group 1 (n=91 men)) and with (group 2 (n=159 men) signs of occupational burnout who showed strategies and models of coping behavior, psychological defense mechanisms by set of psychodiagnostic tests.Results and discussion. It was found that naval professionals without signs of occupational burnout use more constructive strategies and behavior patterns when coping with stress — active, prosocial and indirect behavior strategy and they represent significantly higher values of developed psychological defenses in comparison with individuals with signs of occupational burnout who use passive, asocial and direct behavior strategies.Conclusion. In order to prevent occupational burnout in surveyed individuals, it is advisable to conduct training in use of constructive coping and the best psychological defenses.

Compassion fatigue, watching patients suffering and emotional display rules among hospice professionals: a daily diary study

BackgroundHospice workers are required to regularly use emotional regulation strategies in an attempt to encourage and sustain terminally ill patients and families. Daily emotional regulation in reaction to constantly watching suffering patients may be intensified among those hospice professionals who have high levels of compassion fatigue. The main object of this study was to examine the relationship between daily exposition to seeing patient suffering and daily emotional work, and to assess whether compassion fatigue (secondary traumatic stress and burnout) buffers this relationship.MethodsWe used a diary research design for collecting daily fluctuations in seeing patients suffering and emotional work display. Participants filled in a general survey and daily survey over a period of eight consecutive workdays. A total of 39 hospice professionals from two Italian hospices participated in the study.ResultsMultilevel analyses demonstrated that daily fluctuations in seeing patients suffering was positively related to daily emotional work display after controlling for daily death of patients. Moreover, considering previous levels of compassion fatigue, a buffering effect of high burnout on seeing patients suffering - daily emotional work display relationship was found.ConclusionsA central finding of our study is that fluctuations in daily witness of patients suffering are positively related to daily use of positive emotional regulations. Further, our results show that burnout buffers this relationship such that hospice professionals with high burnout use more emotional display in days where they recurrently witness patients suffering.