¶ … Social Work and Burnout
Providing psychiatric and other forms of social work has been the chosen field of many generations of social workers and a major source of services in mental health facilities. Since psychiatric services are a subset of a larger career field of the health care profession, when the definition of social worker was expanded to health care professionals, it can be understood that the issue of burnout in the health care fields is of increasing importance. The health care professional is responsible for the well-being of others, and when the health care worker spends their time and energy giving to the well being of others without monitoring, or attending to their own needs, not only is the health care worker affected, but so is the entire health care profession, and client base. This research is designed to investigate, and determine some of the factors which contribute to burn out in the social work field.
Literature Review
Burnout among professionals in the health care, and social work field has been of considerable interest. Increasing amounts of research have been accomplished on the phenomena of job satisfaction and burnout in the social work profession (Farber, 1983a; Harrison, 1980). The health care worker is responsible for the emotional and social well being of his or her clients, and the well being of the client can affect virtually every area of the client's life, and relationships which are important to the client. Therefore the health care professional not only affects the well being of the individual client, but can be understood to have a causal effect on every widening numbers of people through their influence on their client's life. Therefore the direct contact with clients in clinical practice and the continual responsibilities of meeting their emotional offer both intrinsic satisfaction and stresses for the service providers (Maslach & Jackson, 1982; Pines & Kafry, 1978).
The emotional condition of the individual social worker can be understood as being directly related to the professional's job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is no longer understood as the results of a monetary successful practice, or other extrinsic factors which affect the social worker. Job satisfaction is defined as a positive emotional state resulting from the self appraisal of one's job situation as it is linked with the characteristics and demands of one's work (Arches, 1991; Butler, 1990). Job satisfaction is understood increasingly as the emotional connection the professional receives and makes to his chosen career. Job satisfaction is a measure of the level to which the person's individual goals and desired for their own match up with the rewards and benefits which the professional receives form their chosen career. Therefore the work-related satisfaction of helping people, achieving change and improvement, and promoting their growth has important implications for social workers' behaviors at work, their desire to continue in their work, and their involvement in the job and with their clients (Beemsterboer & Baum, 1984).
Burnout, on the other hand, is defined as a negative psychological experience that is a reaction of workers to job-related stress (Daley, 1979). Burnout refers to a cluster of physical, emotional, and interactional symptoms, including but not limited to emotional exhaustion, a sense of lacking personal accomplishment. This condition often results in the professional depersonalizing clients their clients, and detaching from the lists of emotional and psycho-social needs which clients bring into their office each day (Maslach & Jackson, 1982). Burnout symptoms also can include physical symptoms, emotional exhaustion, depression, or other serious emotional dysfunction. Recurrent bouts of flu, headaches, fatigue, poor self-esteem, difficulty in interpersonal relationships, substance abuse, inability to concentrate, rigidity, and tendency to blame clients for their problems can appear singularly, or in combination as evidence of burnout (Cherniss, 1980; Pines & Maslach, 1978).
In a profession that is client centered and requires emotional involvement that puts stress on service providers, it is not uncommon for the professional to deplete their own emotional and physical resources in the process of applying their job skills. Pressures of their positions can create an emotionally drained and chronically frustrated worker (Beemsterboer & Baum, 1984; Maslach, 1982). While in this state, these workers are likely to be unable to deal with the inevitable and everyday stresses of their job. This failure to cope can result in a number of negative consequences, including impaired performance, low morale, absenteeism, and high turnover (Beemsterboer & Baum, 1984; Daley, 1979). If left unchecked, the burnout cycle and continued impaired performance can become a self feeding, and devolving...
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