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Causes and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services

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Causes and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services Staff
Lillie Cain-Mitchell
BSHS/462
January 21, 2013
David Worsley

Causes and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services Staff In today’s society, there are many human services agencies and organizations that employ several thousand employees over the United States. Because of a tremendous increase of clients seen in an agency or organization, the employees demonstrated burnout. Burnout is a contributing factor in employees losing time off from work or even seeking medical intervention. If an employee or employees suffer from burnout, this could also lead to a decrease in the organization’s productivity.
Burnout
An employee who suffers from some form of burnout would experience emotional, and mental, and physical fatigue. These symptoms would occur when an employee has become involved in emotional and demanding dilemmas. There are three significant factors that contributes to employee burnout (Lewis, Packard, & Lewis, 2007): 1. temperamental fatigue 2. possessing personal low esteem achievement in regard to clients 3. having an attitude where there is no concern for the clients
Burnout Causes On an individual level, an employee may present with a Type A Personality (Scott, 2006). An employee who presents with this form of burnout would be a host to cardiac problems, health issues, and complications in his or her lifestyle. An employee could also demonstrate bouts of impatience and unexplainable hostility toward others. It is also noted that this form of burnout can contribute to continual stress. An example of this form of burnout would be an employee becoming impatient when assisting an annoying client. Cultural factors that would be a contributing cause for burnout are organizational policies designed more for the human service clients with different cultural beliefs

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