Background: Burnout among human service professionals is a significant public health problem. While systematic reviews on this topic have been conducted, there remains a need for a critical synthesis of intervention studies to prevent or treat burnout in this population that include recent literature and an evaluation of study quality.
Objectives of review: This review aims to answer the following questions: 1) What is the state and quality of evidence that exists regarding burnout interventions for human service workers? 2) What are the best supported interventions to prevent or reduce burnout among human service workers at the individual and organizational levels based on current evidence? 3) What are the gaps in evidence in the existing literature on burnout interventions for human service workers?
Data sources: The data sources for this review include publications in PubMed, PsychInfo, and Medline.
Eligibility Criteria: Studies were eligible if they were English-language and published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Participants: The population of interest were human service workers. For the purposes of this review, nursing personnel, physicians, students and trainees were excluded.
Interventions: Studies were included if a primary or secondary outcome of the intervention was to prevent or reduce burnout or a dimension of burnout and if there were quantitative pre and post intervention measures of burnout.
Study appraisal and synthesis methods: Study characteristics were synthesized into tables and a narrative format and methodologies were evaluated using the EPHPP Quality Assessment Tool.
Results: The final set of publications included 108 interventions at the individual level, 28 at the organizational level, and 6 with components at both levels. Few included publications had moderate or higher risk of bias ratings.
Limitations: The primary limitations of this review were that it was carried about by a single person and may have missed potentially relevant studies.
Conclusions and implications of key findings: There is a need for further, more robust research on interventions at all three levels. Mindfulness-based interventions show promise at reducing burnout at the individual level, but still need further research on diverse samples and with greater follow-up.
Systematic review registration number: The review was not registered
