Burned out at your job? There's a new tool that can measure that

BOSTON - Researchers have designed a tool to help measure burnout.

Burnout on the job is common, especially post-pandemic. In fact, more than half of healthcare workers have reported burnout in the past year. You hit a wall and you just can't be productive anymore, but burnout has long-term consequences such as a higher risk of heart disease, joint pain, insomnia, and depression.

But if employees or perhaps, more importantly, employers can identify the early warning signs of burnout, they can intervene before the physical and psychological effects set in. So researchers in Norway, along with the Healthy Workplaces research group, have designed a tool that measures four main groups of risk factors including exhaustion, mental distancing, cognitive impairment, and emotional impairment.

For example, they ask questions like do you feel mentally exhausted at work? Do you struggle to feel enthusiastic about your job? Do you have trouble concentrating while you're working? Do you sometimes overreact at work without meaning to? They plan to test the screening tool in more than 30 countries.    

In:
• Health

Mallika Marshall, MD

Mallika Marshall, MD is an Emmy-award-winning journalist and physician who has served as the HealthWatch Reporter for CBS Boston/WBZ-TV for over 20 years. A practicing physician Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Dr. Marshall serves on staff at Harvard Medical School and practices at Massachusetts General Hospital at the MGH Chelsea Urgent Care and the MGH Revere Health Center, where she is currently working on the frontlines caring for patients with COVID-19. She is also a host and contributing editor for Harvard Health Publications (HHP), the publishing division of Harvard Medical School.

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