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Are We Experiencing a Burnout Epidemic? (washingtonpost.com) 174

Posted by EditorDavid from the needing-a-personal-day dept.
"Burnout is everywhere," reports the Washington Post.

"Caused in part by social media, the 24-hour news cycle and the pressure to check work email outside of office hours, it could hit you, too -- especially if you don't know how to nip it in the bud..." A recent report from Harvard and Massachusetts medical organizations declared physician burnout a public health crisis. It pointed out the problem not only harms doctors but also patients. "Burnout is associated with increasing medical errors," the paper said... Ninety-five percent of human resource leaders say burnout is sabotaging workplace retention, often because of overly heavy workloads, one [2017] survey found. Poor management contributes to the burnout epidemic. "Organizations typically reward employees who are putting in longer hours and replace workers who aren't taking on an increased workload, which is a systematic problem that causes burnout in the first place," says Dan Schawbel, research director of Future Workplace, the firm that conducted the survey along with Kronos

Part of the difficulty of pinpointing true burnout may be because burnout is a nonmedical term -- at least in the United States. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn't list it as an illness. But other countries including France, Denmark and Sweden, do recognize burnout syndrome and consider it to be a legitimate reason to take a sick day from work.... For those who suspect they might be on the road to burnout, there are practical tools to mitigate it. Among others: physical exercise, sleep and positive social connection (the real kind, not the Facebook kind).
The Post also ran a follow-up article which suggests that to fight burnout, companies need to set reasonable work hours -- and develop a culture encouraging breaks and vacations.
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Are We Experiencing a Burnout Epidemic? More

Are We Experiencing a Burnout Epidemic?

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  • Falsifiability? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @04:47PM (#58358562) Journal

    Is there any sort of guideline/range/fuzzy-logic-set of behaviors or symptoms that indicate that you are definitely not/likely not/maybe/likely/definitely experiencing or approaching burnout? It seems like you'd want to be able to definitely rule it out as something that you're experiencing, unless it's an issue of work/life balance, which never seems to be possible [dilbert.com].

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      /fuzzy-logic-set of behaviors

      Well if you find yourself suddenly running for President thinking you'll lose as a cynical ploy to drum up investment and campaign money to steal for your other failing investments you're decades underwater on, you might be experiencing some burnout as a money launderer for multinational mobsters and multi-bankruptcy insurance fraud administrator... does that answer your question? Try new things, you might get lucky.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If we cling to this idea that everything has to be falsifiable we will never make any progress and open ourselves up to abuse. It's the argument employers use to fend of lawsuits - "you can't prove that working 60 hours a week for months on end caused your stress, and what even is stress anyway, are you sure it's not just gas?"

      We see positive results from people having a better work/life balance. We see people working more and more, and being unable to disengage from work due to things like having work emai

    • Yes, there are a self questionnaires:
      Maslach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      and there's also this which I can't find an English version of:
      KES/KEDS: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

      Last time I looked the risk seems to be related to long term lack of recovery and not the stress itself. From what I remember, as long as your stress doesn't affect your recovery (sleep etc) you have a low risk of clinical burnout. Once it starts affecting sleep and preventing recovery there is an increased risk.

      If we assume

  • If there was a way to make it contagious, I bet there would definitely be a push to address it somehow.

  • repeat after me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30, 2019 @05:01PM (#58358602)

    "i.

    don't

    give

    a

    fuck."

    that's how to avoid this so-called burnout. when you have no fucks to give.. life is absolutely grand.

    (in the presence of others, such as your boss, best to 'think it' not say it).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem with not giving a fuck is that you then become the guy making the minimum amount of effort to avoid getting fired and your career stalls.

      Some places have an unfortunate attitude where taking on more stress is the way to be rewarded with more money, or worse non-monetary perks.

  • Rent a cabin.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by steveb3210 ( 962811 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @05:04PM (#58358612)

    I rented a primitive cabin in NH this winter where there was no cell service within 10 miles. We had no power, plumbing - just a wood stove.

    And it was fantastic...

    • I rented a primitive cabin in NH this winter where there was no cell service within 10 miles. We had no power, plumbing - just a wood stove.

      I hope you at least had cable Internet, and didn't have to rely on DSL. That would be rough.

    • Good to hear you are still around, Heisenberg. :-)

    • When the time comes, just do it, don't bother with manifestos.

  • Probably (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I switched to this new job, in part because of their "unlimited vacation" policy. And as you are able to predict, I fell for some bullshit. My first year there I took like 3.5 weeks off when HR sent me a letter saying I needed to keep it under 3 weeks. Like wait a second, I thought it was UNLIMITED (as long as I got my shit done)?

    I understand that companies do "unlimited" to prevent paying out for unused vacation time, but to limit it seems like the company wins both ways. I'm aware of plenty of coworke

    • Remember that letter from HR. Find a job that offers 3-4 weeks time off (state, Federal, and local government jobs are great for this, so's teaching). Then walk out with 15 minutes' notice. Tell the asshats at HR -- "I'm respecting this company as much as you respected me. Buh-bye..."

    • Re:Probably (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Travco ( 1872216 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @05:18PM (#58358680)
      I asked my union to bargain for more vacation instead of a raise. Guess how popular I was at work.
      • Fuck popularity -- it should be all about your comfort and enjoyment of life, not about working for the company till you die. You don't owe them a damned thing.

      • When you work for a union, do you need to socialize these kinds of things with your other union members first? Seems like if you're part of a union and have enough mad skillz to frequent Slashdot, your cash flow/vacation balance may be better than that of your fellow union members.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        What kind of a crappy union wouldn't fight for both?

    • Can't you sue for something like this? I mean, it was basically falsely advertised.

  • In the case of doctors... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Uncle_Meataxe ( 702474 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @05:13PM (#58358656)

    The shortage of doctors in the US may be, in part, to blame for their long hours and burnout. Their professional organizations have limited the number of medical school and residency slots, which partly explains how they're paid about twice as much as those in other developed countries. Given that a large majority of freshmen entering US universities have pre-med aspirations, there is no lack of potential doctors in the US. More reading here:

    The problem of doctors’ salaries
    https://www.politico.com/agend... [politico.com]

    • Re:In the case of doctors... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @05:20PM (#58358692)

      Thing is, once you finish residency, you CAN work shorter hours. Locum tenens, per diem hospitalist, part-time all are options. Remember, doctors are in demand, so it's relatively easy to find work that's less than full time.

      You just need not to have a large amount of student loans. State school for undergrad, state school, scholarship, or Eastern European country for medical school. Perfectly doable if you plan for it and you know you want to finish your residency, then be able to slow down.

    • The problem with doctors' salaries?
      Fucking seriously?
      How arrogant and self absorbed can you be?
      Are you going to decide what everyone should make? Can you do all their jobs?
      It took me 19 years after college to finish my training. Are you really going to have the balls to tell me that I'm making too much because I worked 100 hours a week for over two decades and had to be at the competitive edge the entire time?
      Fuck you, you self important twit.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        If you're artificially limiting competition to get that salary, then yes.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You're overtrained. Denying medicine by making it too expensive is proving far more deadly than the failures of lesser trained people.

    • Re:In the case of doctors... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by techdolphin ( 1263510 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @11:20PM (#58359862)

      I host and produce the Medicare for All Explained podcast [medicarefo...lained.org] in collaboration with Physicians for a National Health Program [pnhp.org]. Yes, doctors are experience burnout, but often that burnout is caused by having to deal with insurance companies. Doctors have to fight insurance companies to get them to approve necessary treatments, and often the treatments are covered. Doctors have to figure out what drugs are on their patients' insurance plans. These activities take time away from patients. Doctors don't want to spend time fighting insurance companies. They want to help and treat their patients, which is why a majority of doctors favor a single-payer Medicare for All system.

      Second, doctors salaries are a minor problem when it comes to health care costs. Administration costs caused by our fragmented multi-payer health care system is why our health care costs are so high. Doctors spend on average $100,000 on billing and insurance related costs (BIR). If we got rid of insurance companies, doctor's salaries would be more in line with other countries, and they still might have more disposable income. Hospitals have a similar problem. In the U.S. we average about one billing clerk per hospital bed. In Canada a hospital system with just over 1,270 beds has only seven billing clerks. We have more that 931,000 hospital beds in the U.S.

      The doctors' tax is not the problem. It is the tax from keeping our fragmented multi-payer health care system with insurance companies. A single-payer system would resolve these problems.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Give you a tip as to why there's fewer clerks per-bed in Canada. Though this varies a bit by province, in Ontario for example, a hospital must run a balanced budget. A surplus is acceptable but it must be reinvested into the hospital. In other words, regulation and requirements of such is what limits the numbers. If that didn't happen, you'd see the same thing as the US. Also keep in mind, that said hospital may be owned by the city, county, or the province itself.

        We don't have two-tier care here, ever

      • According Bureu of Labor Statistics there are around 68,740 medical billings clerks in the USA; there are 6,210 hospitals in the USA. So doing some simple math you get an average of 11 billing clerks per hospital There are 931,203 staffed beds in those hospitals for an average of 14 beds per billing clerk.

        Going by the numbers you fabricate we can see why you think medicare for all would work. But nice anecdotal story about a single hospital with 1,270 beds and seven billing clerks.
        The number of medi

    • The shortage of doctors in the US may be, in part, to blame for their long hours and burnout.

      Listening to the residents that I support talk, it's a bit more complicated than that. There is both a shortage of doctors and a shortage of positions in the US. If you they wanted to move to a small town or even city, there is no shortage of demands for Attending physicians. Trouble is that most would rather go to the big city and work for a larger hospital, which have full staff. Add in a spouse who has some sort of profession also, perhaps also a doctor, and it makes it harder to relocate to a smaller po

  • I can see where people would indeed be at risk of too much Burnout, given how many releases they have had [mobygames.com].

    The answer might be to take a step back for a while, and maybe not play the game that is Burnout.

    • I can see where people would indeed be at risk of too much Burnout, given how many releases they have had [mobygames.com].

      The answer might be to take a step back for a while, and maybe not play the game that is Burnout.

      Too much burnout and you end up playing Half Life.

  • Betteridge's law of headlines says so.

  • Burnout? No it's called exhaustion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30, 2019 @05:43PM (#58358778)

    And not just physical but mental exhaustion. Because we're not shovelling coal all day people expect us to be just as quick, attentive and efficient after 10 solid hours doing mentally taxing work as we were when we walked in the door.
    When you're taxing your brain for practically every second you're awake it, like every other muscle, is going to get tired and you're going to fuck up, be slower and generally less able to do what you do.

    • And not just physical but mental exhaustion. Because we're not shovelling coal all day people expect us to be just as quick, attentive and efficient after 10 solid hours doing mentally taxing work as we were when we walked in the door. When you're taxing your brain for practically every second you're awake it, like every other muscle, is going to get tired and you're going to fuck up, be slower and generally less able to do what you do.

      The whole business of burnout and exhaustion is actually a pretty complex issue, based on the individual's personality and temperament.

      Some people have problems handling surprisingly small amounts of work, some love loads of it. Then there is the issue of depression, which raises whole other issues. A depressed person is very likely to feel burned out, or the two things can be intermixed.

      I personally find having a lot to do invigorating. And I've worked with people who find work itself stressing. They

  • Think of the shareholders! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danbuter ( 2019760 ) on Saturday March 30, 2019 @06:29PM (#58358924)
    Implementing the vacations/more sick days/ etc would negatively affect stock values for shareholders. This is actually illegal for a corporation to do in the US, without providing concrete facts stating that it would lead to higher yields (good luck with that).

    • Implementing the vacations/more sick days/ etc would negatively affect stock values for shareholders.

      Citation very much needed. Because most of the existing research shows that reducing employee work hours doesn't impact productivity. Employees do something like 30 hrs of real work every week, if that. Making them happier and less stressed ups productivity rather than reducing it.

      And if you really think that it's illegal to do something like this, then put your money where your mouth is and buy some stock. Pull out the research that more hours doesn't mean more productivity, and costs the company more in s

  • Short answer: No (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's not an epidemic; it's another generation having a mid-life crisis and thinking they're the first generation to ever experience it.

  • But other countries including France, Denmark and Sweden, do recognize burnout syndrome and consider it to be a legitimate reason to take a sick day from work

    Can you actually read TFA? For France, "No of subjects with acknowledged burnout syndrome (yr)" and "No of compensated subjects (yr)" is just one single person for 2015.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Can you actually read TFA? For France, "No of subjects with acknowledged burnout syndrome (yr)" and "No of compensated subjects (yr)" is just one single person for 2015.

      France also gives you 11 public holidays per year plus a minimum of 25 additional vacation days per year, for a total of more than seven weeks off per year. So is it little wonder that they don't have the same burnout problems that we do here in the U.S., where the average high-tech worker gets only three weeks plus public holidays? Let me

  • Workers who can study, keep pace with work and can learn new ideas.
    Staff who never had to study a lot? Who never had to learn? Who never had to pass a lot of exams?
    They can't be expected to have the needed skills. Don't hire people who could not understand much about learning.
    Got some people who want to work for your brand?
    Did they study and pass their exams?
    No non academic considerations year after year?
    Did the education they got given have any actual academic part?
    Some simple questions when loo

  • Like AIDS, this "epidemic" is the result of behavioral choices that people could clearly avoid, but decide not to.

    It's hard to sympathize when people do it to themselves.

  • ... to meet expectations. After a while, it either hits you that it's just not worth it; and you choose what to do from there. Or you burnout trying.

  • I burned out... or did I (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I was an engineer. I burned out at about 19 years... or did I.

    For my first 18 years, I worked unbelievably hard and long hours and was still effective. I won't bother detailing it because my experience in doing so is that it truly was unbelievable. People don't believe me when I describe those years.

    I loved engineering. I am a creator. Every day I still find things to create, though these days my creations are rarely technical and only for myself.

    At about 17 years into my career, I made a career mistake in

  • I'd love to see Trump answer the question " do you think American workers should get a statutory amount of paid holiday as they do in the rest of the world."

  • Doctors have to do an unbelievable amount of tedious paperwork. Not uncommon to visit a doctor and have him just announce your $name and stare at some paper while he barely makes eye contact with you.

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