Empathy and Burnout in Helping Professionals

Abstract

The present study is aimed at reviewing current researches on the relationship between empathy and burnout in helping professions. Traditionally, empathy is recognized as a core competence in this field. Occupational burnout in helping professionals is notable for its high levels and prevalence, as well as a variety of factors causing it, including specialists' regular encounters with negative emotions, sufferings and death of the recipients of their help (patients, clients etc.). The studies of the relationship between empathy and burnout were analyzed under one of the existing hypotheses: empathy promotes burnout; burnout reduces empathy; empathy prevents from burnout. This study considers phenomena specific to helping professions, such as secondary traumatization, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction and emotional dissonance, as well as their association with burnout. The analysis suggests that all three hypotheses are relevant and that a more nuanced understanding of empathy is necessary to provide insight into its relationship to burnout. The problem of finding an association between empathy and burnout transforms into the one, concerning the quality (or level) of professional empathy, as well as the possibility and ability to regulate it.