Burnout

Role

Burnout is the most consequential occupational health crisis of the contemporary era — affecting an estimated 67% of US workers, producing healthcare systems in which a third of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers meet burnout criteria, and representing billions in organizational costs from absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, and medical errors. Yet it is systematically underaddressed by organizations that benefit from the sustained high output that pre-burnout employees provide, and by individuals who interpret the warning signs of impending burnout (fatigue, cynicism, declining efficacy) as personal inadequacy requiring more effort rather than as the biological signals of a nervous system requiring recovery. Burnout does not announce itself dramatically — it progresses gradually through warning stages that most people are not trained to recognize until they have crossed into the clinical syndrome.