Emotional exhaustion

Health Management Glossary

Workforce and Leadership

Definition. Emotional exhaustion is the feeling of being emotionally overextended and drained by one's work, and it is the core dimension of burnout.

Explanation

In the Maslach Burnout Inventory, emotional exhaustion is measured alongside depersonalisation (cynicism) and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). It usually develops first and is most strongly related to workload and time pressure.

Maslach, Schaufeli and Leiter (2001) show that exhaustion predicts absence, turnover and poorer quality of care, and that it responds more to changes in workload, control, reward and fairness than to individual coping training alone.

Related concepts

Burnout Moral distress Turnover intention Job satisfaction

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References

Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Occupational Behaviour, 2(2), 99–113.

Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422.

Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Emotional exhaustion. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/emotional-exhaustion/

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