Estrategias de prevención e intervención del burnout en el ámbito educativo
- Autores: Jesús Carlos Rubio Jiménez, Eloísa Julia Guerrero Barona
- Localización: Salud mental, ISSN 0185-3325, Vol. 28, Nº. 5, 2005, págs. 27-33
- Idioma: español
- Enlaces
- Dialnet Métricas: 16 Citas
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Resumen
- español
El estrés es el origen del 50% de las bajas laborales en la Unión Europea. Burnout es un término anglosajón cuya traducción más aproximada es ¿estar quemado por el trabajo¿, desgastado y exhausto. Ha de entenderse como una respuesta al estrés crónico causado por las relaciones entre los usuarios de los servicios asistenciales y los profesionales que los atienden.
Desde el ámbito de la psiquiatría, los problemas psicológicos propios del contexto laboral no han recibido suficiente atención aunque numerosos autores a lo largo de los últimos años los han analizado y han defendido la necesidad de investigarlos.
Estrategias de prevención e intervención Alvarez y Fernández clasifican en dos categorías los distintos estudios revisados en su trabajo sobre la prevención y el tratamiento del burnout. La primera corresponde a la prevención primaria; la segunda, correspondiente a la prevención secundaria, engloba los estudios que examinan y comparan las diversas técnicas de intervención: estrategias individuales (técnicas fisiológicas, conductuales y cognitivas) y estrategias de intervención social.
Consideraciones finales Los distintos trabajos revisados han puesto de manifiesto que, para explicar la complejidad del síndrome de burnout, éste se ha de enfocar desde una perspectiva amplia, lo que a su vez nos lleva a plantear que la forma más eficaz de abordar la prevención y el tratamiento del mismo es una intervención integral que actúe en las dimensiones individual, social y organizacional. En otros trabajos hemos propuesto el diseño de un programa de intervención psicopedagógica desde el modelo cognitivo-conductual. Su objetivo principal es equipar a los participantes con estrategias de afrontamiento que les permitan mejorar su salud, calidad de vida laboral y comodidad personal. La "sociedad de la información" ha cambiado su modelo y requiere de profesionales que se adapten a los constantes cambios tecnológicos, sociales y culturales. Los puestos de trabajos únicos ya no existen, y la formación profesional que se ha recibido no nos ha preparado lo suficiente ni basta para afrontar esa realidad de crisis y, a veces, envuelta en la incertidumbre que constituye el escenario educativo actual. Por ello se requiere una formación fresca y continuada que permita hacerle frente a la vida laboral, en la que sean prioritarios otros conocimientos y valores diferentes a los técnicos, para los que sí hemos sido preparados. Nos referimos a programas de formación que contemplen el desarrollo de competencias personales, emocionales y profesionales que serán las que nos facilten comunicarnos con eficacia, desempeñar el trabajo en grupos, manejar nuestras emociones, la creatividad y la innovación, etc.
En el momento actual no existen medidas paliativas ni terapéuticas efectivas para hacer frente al estrés y el burnout en los profesionales de la docencia. Los profesores con burnout no rinden adecuadamente y su presencia empeora la calidad de la enseñanza. Estas razones nos han movido a ofrecer, mediante un proyecto de investigación, el diseño y la implementación de un programa de prevención e intervención para el estrés del docente. Tenemos el convencimiento de que en el futuro, no sólo la puesta en marcha y el desarrollo de programas preventivos, sino también su evaluación, se realizarán mediante un riguroso seguimiento. No obstante, con este artículo esperamos lograr contribuir a la prevención de disfunciones y a la promoción en salud, así como a la intervención y el seguimiento de programas de afrontamiento para mejorar las competencias personales, sociales y laborales.
- English
In the European Union 50 per cent leave their jobs due to stress. Burnout is an English term literally meaning “to be burnt out by work”, that is, to be emotionally exhausted. Later on, this term was extended and consolidated by Maschlach and Jackson who considered burnout as a threedimensional syndrome derived from emotional chronic stress characterized by physical and/or psychological tiredness, a feeling of being unable to work more (emotional exhaustion), a cold and impersonal attitude towards other people, and a feeling that the current job position and the fulfilled tasks are inadequate.
From a psychosocial point of view, burnout must not be identified as psychological stress, yet it has to be understood as a response to chronic stress sources developed from relationships between assistance services users and the workers who take care of them.
From the psychiatric scope, Olza pointed out that psychological problems that are job related have not been given enough attention. Burnout is one of the major problems that has strong financial, social and personal effects.
Our review is centered in the burnout syndrome prevalence among education professionals. In the past years many authors analysed and defended the need of a deep research regarding this subject. These authors also established burnout as a non questionable feature in the case of teaching, taking into account that somatic and psychological problems are common and affect teachers’ performance as well as their relationship with students and their teaching quality.
Prevention and intervention strategies Burnout research has been centered in describing the syndrome, facilitating variables, and describing syndrome consequences. It has been taken also as a statistical analysis of measure instruments. Alvarez and Fernandez classify the researches reviewed in their work in two categories considering burnout prevention and treatment. The first one is related to primary prevention and the second covers secondary prevention; it includes researches that examine and compare diverse intervention techniques.
Individual strategies This part refers to a preventive and treatment focused approach meant to promote self-adaptation improvement strategies, and stress confronting regarding many personal factors.
Physiological techniques Techniques oriented towards physiological arousal and emotional or physical unrest caused by labour stress sources, such as physical relaxation, breath control and biofeedback are considered among others.
Behavioural techniques Those techniques are aimed to self-acquired skills and competences to facilitate labour conflict solving. Assertive training, social skills training, problem solving techniques and self-control are considered among others.
Cognitive techniques Cognitive approach focuses on the perception, interpretation, and evaluation of labour conflicts and self resources that are at work in the subject. Taking into account that burnout is mediated by irrational thinking derived from stressing events, it is important to confront it according to cognitive techniques in order to change automate thinking.
The following are among cognitive techniques: Systematic desensibilization, mind detention, stress inoculation, cognitive restructuration, irrational thinking control, dysfunctional attitude suppression and rational-emotive therapy.
Social intervention strategies Social intervention strategies are considered to break isolation and improve socialization processes, strengthening social support trough cooperative work policies. It seems clear that social support crushes the nocive effects produced by stress sources and increases self-capacity to confront them.
Sandin points out that social support affects health directly; therefore, to have a support net facilitates individual experiences regarding self-esteem, positive affection and control, protecting the worker from multiple diseases and improving the immunologic system.
Final remarks Different researches reviewed, clearly show that, for burnout to be explained in all its complexity, it is necessary a wider approach. This takes us to lay out a more efficient way to handle prevention and treatment as a holistic intervention that includes single, social and organizational contexts.
Other researches propose a psychopedagogical intervention program from a behavioural-cognitive approach, aimed to provide confronting strategies that will allow to improve health, labor quality and personal confort.
Information society has changed its pattern and needs professionals being capable of adapting to continuous technological, social and cultural changes. Static job positions have disappeared and initial formation does not have the level needed to confront the educational challenging that our educational reality has become.
It is now needed a fresh and continued formation where other values rather than technical ones are taken into account. We are undoubtedly referring to personal, emotional and professional competence development programs, that will allow ourselves to communicate efficiently, work in groups, and control our emotions as well as our creative and innovative capabilities.
Currently there are no measures to soften burnout in teachers; burnout teachers performance gets worse and their presence has negative effects on their teaching quality. These reasons moved us to propose the design and implementation of a prevention and intervention program dealing with teacher’s stress, trough a research project.
We believe that in the future, setting, development, and -most important- evaluation of this kind of programs will be strictly held; meanwhile, we hope to contribute with this article to promote dysfunction prevention and health improvement, as well as the involvement and monitoring of challenging programs designed to improve single, social and labour competences.
- español
