ArticleWork (Reading, Mass.)2024
The Maslach Burnout Inventory is not a measure of burnout.
Article in Work (Reading, Mass.), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Burnout Syndrome in Sport-Related Jobs: A Meta-analysis of Recent Evidence.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2026Pooled it
- Chronic stress in relation to clinical burnout: an integrative scoping review of definitions and measurement approaches.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- The Development of the Psychological Monitors' Burnout Scale in College.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Assessment of Mental Health in Healthcare Personnel: A Review of DASS, MBI, and Zung Scales.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- On theAnnals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England · 2026Article
- Burnout Across Healthcare, Educational, and Professional Populations: A Comprehensive Scoping Review.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2026Review
- Article
- The Pitfalls of Measuring Burnout Prevalence: μετά the Meta-Analysis, What Then?United European gastroenterology journal · 2025Article
- The occupational depression inventory confounds depressive symptoms with their assumed work-related causes.Work (Reading, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Is It Time to Address Burnout in the Military? Initial Psychometric Validation of the Maslach Burnout Inventory Among Tunisian Military Personnel (A-MBI-MP).Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Five decades of debate on burnout.The Medical journal of Australia · 2024Article
- Agreement between the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory among emergency physicians and trainees.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For decades, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) has been regarded as the "gold standard" for the assessment of burnout. The present paper demonstrates that the MBI fails to measure the construct it is purported to measure. On a deeper level, the problems affecting the MBI question the very idea of burnout. These problems may be unsurprising in light of the genesis of the burnout construct. Burnout emerged in the mid-1970s as a largely predefined entity. Burnout's definition was not predicated on robust empirical investigations or sound theorizing, nor was it anchored in a systematic review of the literature on stress and health. Interestingly, other measures deemed to assess burnout, such as the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, similarly fail to measure what they are claimed to measure. Despite far-reaching implications for our ability to study and promote occupational health, the flaws that undermine the conceptualization and measurement of burnout remain widely underappreciated. We hope this paper will help raise awareness of these flaws and correct current practices in research on job-related distress. Alternatives to burnout do exist and may enable us to support our workforce more effectively.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.