Smacc

In this week’s podcast Liz Crowe – an advanced clinician social worker who has worked in Brisbane’s major children’s hospitals in intensive care, emergency departments and cancer wards - begins the podcast with the question – is all this talk of burn out, actually making us burnt out?   In this podcast, Liz goes on to address exactly what the term burn out actually means and discusses how the literature on burnout in healthcare workers is prolific. She discusses how healthcare presents as an occupation of high risk, distress, and despair, with an escalation of risk post pandemic. Yet, she says, burnout is not the whole story even though it is the only story being told. Liz speaks about the extensive research into burnout and what it reveals, and the risk factors for burnout, which include excessive workload, lack of control or recognition, mismatch of values, lack of meaning and emotional contagion. However, she notes that none of these are individual deficits and says that it is concerning that ‘wellbeing’ i