According to Maslach, burnout is a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a low level of personal accomplishments, which primarily affects people who are somehow dealing with other people in their work.

Burnout develops as a response to the chronic emotional strain, whichis the result of dealing with other people and especially with people who cope with serious problems. Thus, burnout could be considered as a type of professional stress, which results from the social interaction between the person who provides help, and the person who receives that help.

Nurses are particularly susceptible to the development of burnout, mainly because of the nature and the emotional demands of their profession.

It is related to the deterioration of relationships between the nurse and the patients, the coworkers, the family and the social environment.

Additionally, burnout has been closely related to both the absenteeism of nurses from work and abandoning nursing. Finally, the nursing burnout results in poor patient care.

Among the reasons contributing to the development of burnout are the following:

1) The time that nurses spend for the patients care.

2) The contact with patients having a poor diagnosis.

3) The contact with patients having increased emotional demands.

4) Work load. 5) Ambiguity and role conflict.

6) Lack of support on the part of the supervisor and colleagues.

7) Lack of job satisfaction and

8) Fear of death.

Very important for the development of burnout are also the personalitycharacteristics of the individual, his motivations for having chosen a humanistic profession, his expectations from himself and the others, his values, his self-

esteem, his ability to express his feelings, the control he exerts over the events, and the others, and his personal style.

It is said, that some people are more stress resistant, and thus less vulnerable to the development of burnout.

There are differences in the degree of burnout experienced by nurses working in different fields. This may be attributed to the conflicts among staff, to the decreased expertise of the workers, and to the work overload.

The nursing personnel who were working in emergency departments experienced significantly higher levels of emotional exhaustion anddepersonalization in comparison to nurses of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and other specialties.