Impact of learning communication skills and practicing selfcare on burnout management

Abstract

Job burnout is a burning concept nowadays that has been incorporated into everyone‘s lives remarkably. Chronic job stresses have caused many professionals and workers to fall into job burnout in the past few decades. In wide-range, job burnout is an extensive reaction of persistent emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job. The purposes of this study were to assess the need for a burnout management program in hospital settings, to develop an intervention program namely ―Communication Skills and Selfcare Enhancement Program‖ for burnout manage ment, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention program by quantitative and qualitative assessment. With this vision, three studies were carried out in the present M.Phil project. The first study was an FGD to assess the need for a burnout management program. The FGD found a valid need for a burnout management program and identified many sources of burnout, which include lack of good communication skills, un-empathic and un-appreciating environment and lack of knowledge on selfcare. The second study was to develop an intervention program namely ―Communication Skills and Selfcare Enhancement Program‖. It was developed based on FGD findings and the reference of conventional burnout management programs. The intervention program consists of four phases - 1) stress management, 2) communication skills, 3) empathetic communication and behavior and 4) stroking (recognition). Four separate modules have been developed for each workshop from beginning to end with an appropriate time duration that includes brief content. After completion of the module, a pilot execution was conducted before the field study and according to the feedback and suggestions of the pilot test, small changes were made. Thus, the modules were finalized for the field test. The third study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention program by quantitative and qualitative assessment. The intervention was administered once a week for an hour in four consecutive weeks. It was conducted on two groups (experimental and control) following pretest post test design. A total number of 63 employees were included from two hospitals of Dhaka city where 30 of them received the intervention program and 33 of them did not receive any intervention. The result implied that the intervention significantly reduced the level of burnout. The burnout level dropped from the pretest to the post test phase in the experimental condition and a little hike at the follow-up phase, but not in the control condition. The qualitative assessment which was done by the in-depth interview at the second follow-up of the program further supported the findings. Altogether the outcomes of the present study revealed that the organizations can use this type of program under the guidance of professional psychologists to manage their employee burnout, as they are responsible to look after and maintain the mental health of their employees. This study is a baseline that has opened the further scope of different studies in this field. It has been expected to contribute to improving the mental health and the quality of life of the working people in Bangladesh.