Burnout and collegial support in state psychiatric hospital staff

To determine the correlates of burnout, 47 employees of a state psychiatric hospital completed measures of burnout, collegial support, prolonged anxiety, physical health, and job attitude. Results showed that burnout was associated positively with anxiety, frequency of illness, and contrary job attitudes, and correlated negatively with level of satisfaction with the collegial support network. Partial correlations showed that satisfaction with support systems diminished the effects of burnout on frequency of illness and job attitudes. Tests for divergent validity showed that these findings were specific to burnout and not other measures of job satisfaction or fulfillment. The results suggest that facilitating staff satisfaction with colleagues may reduce burnout and some of its deleterious effects.