Running on empty: Dealing with workplace burnout A report and a response from the Atlantic Institute Staff Retreat, Da Nang, Vietnam, February 2024 Samantha Meeker1 & Brian Lawlor2 1 AFHE Equity Scholar, Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity, The George Washington University,
Washington DC, USA
2 Site Director, Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Burnout is the feeling that you're continuously running on empty, that you've nothing left in the tank to give to your work or your workplace. It happens due to cumulative stress without adequate replenishment. Burnout has both intrinsic and extrinsic components, all of which must be addressed if we are to create a healthier and more healing workplace. A survey of staff from Atlantic Fellows programs reported high levels of burnout with 65% often or very often feeling exhausted, 41% often or very often feeling like withdrawing, and 47% often or very often feeling irritated at work. Between 60-70% feel that they do not have enough time to do a proper job and the most common stressor cited is workload. Burnout There are three main components to burnout syndrome (Maslach & Jackson 1981). The first component is emotional exhaustion, a feeling of being run down and drained physically and emotionally. The second component is a feeling of depersonalization or distancing. This is where you are disconnected from the people around and you avoid situations and interactions. You may find yourself being irritable and angry with people for no real reason. This component can also be associated with feeling lonely and isolated, not having somebody to support you or to confide in. The third component is a feeling of reduced effectiveness, believing that you're in the wrong job, unable to accomplish goals and essentially thinking that you’re ineffective. Each component can lead to have significant behavioural consequences such as sadness, avoidance, alcohol or substance misuse, impaired cognition and poor decision-making. However, burnout can also have physical manifestations. Burnout leads to chronic over-activation of the stress axis, with initially raised cortisol levels and eventually a state of low cortisol levels; essentially a burnout of the body’s response system to stress (Oosterholt et al. 2015). Within the brain, studies have found an association between burnout and thinning of the prefrontal cortex and a larger amygdala (or fear centre) (Savic et al. 2015) which may account for the mood and cognitive changes that are reported. There are also significant cognitive costs to burnout: the executive, attentional and memory systems are adversely affected and there is an increased risk of making attentional errors (Deligkaris et al. 2014). Furthermore, burnout is liked to increase cardiovascular risk, high blood pressure, insomnia, diabetes and depression (Salvagioni et l. 2017; Khammissa et al. 2022). Burnout can stem from over-commitment, excessive compassion, and deep emotional investment in one's work. And while this deep commitment is what drives many of us in our work with the Atlantic Fellows community we also need to be aware that it can result in a disconnection from ourselves and the people around us, as well as a feeling of exhaustion and not being effective at what we do. A similar challenge for passionate staff members is that while we may try to change circumstances around us, sometimes people and structures cannot or will not change, adding a significant level of frustration which ramps up the stress level.