Work and Health

“WHO Redefines Burnout As a ‘Syndrome’ Linked To Chronic Stress at Work”

This article talks about stress which emanates from the workplace. WHO is addressing the issue of work-related stress and more specifically “burnout” WHO recognizes burnout as an occupational phenomenon a lists the factors which cause it. They characterize it by the feelings of energy exhaustion, increased mental distance from the job and negative emotions related to one’s career, which reduces professional efficacy. Therefore, burnout is the state of emotional fatigue which encompasses a sense of reduced achievement or loss of personal character. It is thus not a medical condition, factors such as depression behind depression.

Some of the possible causes of burnout in a job include lack of control. It refers to the inability of employees to initiate decisions that affect their jobs, such as workload, and or lack of resources. Also, unclear job expectations lead to burnout (NPR, 2019). Dysfunctional workplace undercurrents tend to undermine employees or when the boss micromanaging your work is likely to contribute to job stress. Moreover, lack of social support and work-life balance makes one feel isolated at work and thus in personal life. Work-life imbalance consumes too much of one’s time and effort leading to family, friends and work imbalance.

Therefore, according to WHO, managers have a more significant role in talking about burnout by paying receptiveness. To whether workers have a sense of community at work, robust social relations, shared environment and a workload that is not too oppressive, as a sense of agency and healthy work-life balance.

WHO also recommends that when diagnosing burnout, experts should rule out mood disorders, anxiety and stress-related disorders.

The book titled introduction to sociology by Griffiths et al. (2015) is a systematic study of human social life. It studies how people form groups and relate to each other. Groups may be small ones such as nuptial couples or large groups such as suburban adolescents. Thus, most emphasis is placed on studying societies, global perspectives and individual entitlements. It talks about culture, social research, community and social interactions. Groups and organizations, media and technology, social stratification, global inequality, race and ethnicity. Also, it covers, education, work and economy, health and medicine social movements and population, environment and urbanization. So, the two readings share a common theme of health and medicine and work and economy. They also share the conflict approach in understanding society’s structure.

Conflict approach asserts that society is structured in a manner that which favours some people in the community and not others. It is embedded with structural functionalism. It also argues that society is structured in a way not well understood as a multifaceted system which strives for balance but instead as a rivalry society. A community is made up of people who are competing for limited resources such as money, sexual partners, leisure and many more. Broader structures such as the government and religious institutions reflect the rivalry for resources due to their inherent inequalities (Collins & Sanderson, 2015). Some people have more resources at their disposal as a way of maintaining their positions and power in society. The theory, therefore, illustrates the limitations of structural-functionalism, where people are conflicting over resources. The first tenet of the model is competition over scarce resources. As such, people are divided over resources due to capitalism. Some people own factories others work in them. So according to Marx, the bourgeois capitalists own high producing businesses. The rich continued to be productive, and the Proletariats get burnout as they perform manual labour to deliver goods. They a times work extra hours without being compensated. The opposing interests and feelings bring about burnouts and hence, conflicts.

The second tenet is “disparities in power and remuneration are constructed in all social structures.” From the book introduction to sociology, it talks about Health and Medicine. Conflict theory, on the other hand, talks about “The Sick Role.” The term Sick role is used in medical sociology to refer to sickness and the privileges and duties of the affected. From the functionalist viewpoint, a sick person is a less productive person. So, in the workplace, when an employee is sick, it means he/she ought to be exempted from work. But some employers demand too much from them, nonetheless, leading to the stigmatization of illness. Such workers become mentally tortured, leading to low productivity.

The third tenet is, “change is revolutionary, rather than evolutionary. According to this theory, social inequality symbolizes the quality of healthcare and health. Poor people are likely to become sick. They are underinsured, therefore receive insufficient healthcare. But the theory aims to ensure that everybody receives quality healthcare delivery.

The key recommendations in offering improving healthcare are by emphasizing that all “health care experts be educated on delivering patient-centred care as members of an interdisciplinary team, stressing on evidence-based practice, quality improvement and embracing of informatics.” By adhering to these recommendations, they can deliver better quality health care free from stigmatization and burnout due to illness-related stress.

References

Griffiths, Heather, Nathan Keirns, Eric Strayer, Susan Cody-Rydzewski, Gail Scaramuzzo,          Tommy Sadler, Sally Vyain, Jeff Bry, and Faye Jones. 2015. Introduction to Sociology      4th ed. Retrieved May 23, 2018 (https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-       sociology-2e)

NPR. (2019). WHO Redefines Burnout As A ‘Syndrome’ Linked To Chronic Stress At Work. Health News From NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/28/727637944/who-redefines-burnout-as-a-syndrome-linked-to-chronic-stress-at-work

Randall Collins, S. K. (2015). Conflict Sociology: A Sociological Classic Updated. Routledge.