The decree of June 7, 2016 (Légifrance, 2016), resulting from the Rebsamen law, of August 17, 2015, allows recognition (although not systematically) of psychological pathologies, including burn-out, as occupational diseases. In addition, Article L. 4121-1 of the Labor Code stipulates that the employer must ensure the safety of their employees, and protect their physical and mental health (Teyssié, 2016).
In view of this, the professional environment can be a risk factor for the physical and mental health of employees. In such a context, certain pathologies, mainly such as cardiovascular, mental and musculoskeletal disorders, are likely to increase by 50 to 100% (Gollac & Bodier, 2011). Regarding mental pathologies, Khireddine et al. (2015) indicate that the symptoms and pathologies related to psychic suffering at work increased among French employees between 2007 and 2012. Burnouts, specifically, would have passed from 4.4% to 6.7% between 2007 and 2012 However, health insurers only recognized 315 cases of psychic disorders as occupational diseases in 2015. The national watchdog of occupational physicians estimate that work-related psychic suffering (including burnout) could actually affect around 490,000 people a year in France.
One of the major risk factors in the possible occurrence of burnout is the emotional burden experienced in a professional situation, and the emotional demands that are linked to it. In the so-called contact professions, in other words, in which workers interact with other individuals, whether they are clients in services, students in education or patients in care, professionals dealing with the public, especially those in distress, seem more exposed than others to psychosocial risk factors of an emotional nature (Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee & Borgeaud, 2010, Hochschild, 1983, Reeves, 2005). A survey on working conditions in the French public service conducted in 2013 (Davie, 2014) reveals that healthcare professionals are the most exposed to emotional demands (along with social intervention, public safety and security, education, training, research and justice). Professionals in the care relationship in general (Grandey, Foo, Groth, & Goodwin, 2011, Hochschild, 1983, Pezé, 2015) and nurses in particular (Duarte, Pinto-Gouveia & Cruz, 2016, Gandoy-Crego, Clemente Maya’n-Santos & Espinoza, 2008) are also particularly at risk of burnout. In this perspective, it is also important to stress that “hospital structures […] in which stressful and emotionally difficult situations are a characteristic” constitute “the initial environment for the identification of burnout” (Boudoukha 2016, p.16).
This is not to say that there is a consensual definition (Zawieja & Guarnieri, 2013). However, three authors are unanimously cited when it comes to defining burnout. First, Bradley (1969) introduced the term burnout to describe individuals with significant stress because of their work. Secondly, Freudenberger (1974) who, working with drug addicts in a clinic, observed phenomena of physical pain, fatigue and psychological exhaustion among caregivers; phenomena he attributes to the pressures and professional demands faced by these staff. His theoretical model is based on the idea that burnout results from excessive commitment, linked to excessive demand (Zawieja, 2015). Finally, Maslach (1976) theorised the concept by proposing a burnout model developed through his research in social sector employees: the attributional and environmental model (Attributional Environmental Model, Maslach, 1982). It seems to be the current benchmark for burnout (Boudoukha, 2016, Chapelle, 2016, Zawieja, 2015). This is a three-dimensional model that defines burnout according to three characteristics: – The state of depersonalisation: the subject no longer manages to invest in the relationship to the other, or in his work. He loses his capacity for empathy, treating the other as an object rather than a subject. He would try to distance himself from his colleagues or users with whom he interacts in a work situation, in order to protect himself from emotional exhaustion but also from burnout in general. – The reduction of one’s self accomplishment: the subject feels professionally and personally ineffective and devalues himself. – Emotional exhaustion: the individual feels deprived of energy. By dint of heavy professional obligations, he exhausts his physical and psychological resources.Thus, in connection with the theory of resource conservation (Hobfoll, 1989), a reference theory in occupational psychology (Sassi & Neveu, 2010), burnout occurs when an individual’s capacities for material, social, economic and psychological resources are lost, threatened or not renewed (Sassi & Neveu, 2010, Zawieja & Guarnieri, 2013) leading him to situations of emotionally intense chronic stress(Pezé, 2015).
A better knowledge of the risk of burn-out in the various professional sectors is therefore essential in order to identify populations at risk. Preventive actions in companies facing the risk of burnout could then be considered. More generally, the state of burnout has an impact on the organisation itself, as the concerned workers are no longer able to respond fully to organisational expectations (Truchot, 2004). It is therefore important to work on this question in both its preventive and curative aspects, in a clinical (health of personnel), social (quality of life at work), organisational (effective functioning of organisations) and economic perspective (costs related to absenteeism and decreased productivity associated with burnout).
My name is Sonia. I come from the University of Nantes. Two main fields of intervention interest me in work psychology: psychosocial risks and the general workplace clinic, on the one hand, and psychosocial intervention on the other hand. Moreover, I would like to work mainly with institutions of care or medico-social