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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Burned-Out With Burnout? Insights From Historical Analysis, Renzo Bianchi, Katarzyna Wac, James Francis Sowden, Irvin Sam Schonfeld
Burned-Out With Burnout? Insights From Historical Analysis, Renzo Bianchi, Katarzyna Wac, James Francis Sowden, Irvin Sam Schonfeld
Publications and Research
Fierce debates surround the conceptualization and measurement of job-related distress in occupational health science. The use of burnout as an index of job-related distress, though commonplace, has increasingly been called into question. In this paper, we first highlight foundational problems that undermine the burnout construct and its legacy measure, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Next, we report on advances in research on job-related distress that depart from the use of the burnout construct. Tracing the genesis of the burnout construct, we observe that (a) burnout’s definition was preestablished rather than derived from a rigorous research process and (b) the MBI …
Who Needs To Be “Burned-Out”? Time For A New Approach To Job-Related Distress, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld
Who Needs To Be “Burned-Out”? Time For A New Approach To Job-Related Distress, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld
Publications and Research
Burnout is a popular indicator of job-related distress, notably in research on the ill-being of medical professionals. The burnout construct is, however, plagued by definitional and measurement problems. Often unnoticed, these problems undermine findings and conclusions emanating from burnout research. The definitional and measurement problems affecting the burnout construct hamper knowledge growth, waste resources, and impede our ability to make informed decisions and take effective action to support personnel. It is time for occupational health specialists to abandon the idea of burnout and focus on occupational depression.
A Solution For Breaking The Impasse Of Burnout Measurement, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld
A Solution For Breaking The Impasse Of Burnout Measurement, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld
Publications and Research
In view of the profound problems affecting burnout’s conceptualization and measurement and because there is now robust evidence that burnout is a depressive condition, we recommend that occupational health specialists shift their focus from burnout to depression. A measure of job-related depressive symptoms, the Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI), has recently been developed. Advantageously, the ODI resolves many of the persistent problems linked to burnout while being consistent with burnout researchers’ original aim of assessing a work-attributed form of distress. The ODI includes a diagnostic algorithm that allows investigators to estimate the prevalence of depressive disorders that individuals specifically ascribe to …