18301: Diamonds Under Pressure: A 40-Year Problematization Review of Frontline Burnout (session 25784)

Burnout, a multidimensional response to chronic workplace stress, has been of substantial concern for employers and employees for over 50 years. Prior research has consistently linked burnout to workplace disengagement and detachment, and deterioration in well-being. However, current discourse highlights unclear long-term effects, inconsistent definitions, conflicting views on its impact, and concern over how to intervene effectively suggesting a review of the literature is timely. To address this, we conduct a problematization review, a critical approach to identifying deficiencies, flaws and contradictions in current approaches, and future recommendations. Our review spans over 40 years and includes 76 empirical studies ranked in the top ten percentile (based on CiteScore, Scopus) across various disciplines focusing on frontline work populations such as nurses, physicians, and teachers. Despite burnout being widely recognized as multidimensional, our review reveals a persistent oversimplification often reducing burnout to exhaustion, with numerous instances where self-efficacy, a vital dimension, was entirely omitted. Additionally, our review found a notable lack of empirical research in top-tier journals addressing burnout interventions or tracking its temporal dynamics. We also found that, in certain contexts, burnout can foster resilience, improve job satisfaction, and even enhance well-being, challenging the traditional view of burnout as solely negative. This review offers avenues for future research and practice based on 14 frontline contexts across 12 disciplines, and questions how well we know burnout if it is measured, studied, and assumed to be solely bad and degrading in nature.

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