What have we learned about burnout and health?

Abstract

Abstract It has been a decade since an international group of scholars came together to discuss and debate the construct of job burnout. That conference, which took place in Krakow, Poland in 1990, was a major turning point in the development of this field. Not only did it bring together a wide range of theoretical perspectives and empirical data, it generated new directions for the work that needed to be done in the future (Schaufeli et al., 1993). Now that we are 10 years into that future, it would be worthwhile to assemble a new group of international scholars and discover what progress has been made. In essence, that is what the editors of this Special Issue have done. They have invited several of the leading burnout researchers from several continents to contribute their newest studies on this important social phenomenon. Thus this Special Issue affords us the opportunity to assess the strides that have been made since that first meeting in Krakow. So what have we now learned about burnout and its relation to health?