A workshop assessing the effects of social support on the incidence of burnout

Abstract

This research was designed to address the issue of burnout by developing and presenting a workshop to 26 human service providers (primarily educated Caucasian women) to increase their level of social support and address organizational concerns. Two measures were used in a pre-posttest design: the Maslach Burnout Inventory and social support questionnaire developed for this study. The results showed that burnout dropped significantly on the emotional exhaustion subscale. There was a drop in the depersonalization subscale but it only approached significance. There was also a negative correlation of perceived social support satisfaction with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization at both pre and posttest. Building social support has implications for reducing burnout. Studies with quasi-experimental designs and larger samples are needed to further validate the findings of this study.