Exam 14: Avoiding Burnout

A "60-day miracle cure" refers to the fact that some insurance companies will not reimburse for in-patient psychiatric care after 60 days.

Placing a child in a foster home cannot be reimbursed by an insurance company.

If a worker cares enough, works hard enough, and is conscientious enough, there is no reason why all of his or her clients shouldn't improve their life conditions.

Some human service agencies respond to a lack of resources by sacrificing their original service goals in order to meet their administrative needs.

It is irrelevant for a human service worker to understand the social and political structure of their agency, because their focus needs to be on the people that they are helping.

How do the requirements of insurance companies and funding agencies affect treatment?

Given all the potential frustrations of the field of human services, what are your reasons for choosing this field? 

In your own words, give an example of how a worker might over-identify with a client.

Name some of the human services that are not reimbursable by insurance companies.

In the human services there is a sharp distinction between a professional organization and a union.

Karl Marx said that when work does not belong to the worker, he does not feel content.

"Social workers are caught between the privatization of profits and the socialization of the costs from that profit making." What does this mean?

When analyzing the phenomenon of burnout, some theorists look at it from an individual psychological perspective, while others examine it from a sociological perspective. What do those who examine it from an individual psychological perspective emphasize?

A single-minded pre-occupation with getting ahead in a career to the exclusion of other interests or values is called:

There is research evidence that shows that helping others improves people's mental health, physical well-being, and longevity.

How would you describe a human service worker who is said by his or her colleagues to be "burnt-out"? How might he or she act? What might he or she be experiencing?

There is evidence that by helping others, people always improve their mental health.

Compassion fatigue is uncommon among individuals who work directly with victims of trauma; mostly it impacts first responders such as fire-fighters and police officers.

Workers have found that rotating tasks within an agency is a useful burnout protection.

The process of relating so completely to another person's feelings and/or experiences that one cannot separate oneself from the other person is called: