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- Set your genetic counseling priorities. Decide which are the most important
things to accomplish during a session and what things are less important. This
requires strategic and conscious decisions (Osborn 2004 ). - Try to focus more on the patient and less on yourself during sessions, and work
to trust your feelings and instincts about the right way to respond to patients. - Practice self-care such as finding personal time and developing healthy outlets
(Jungbluth et al. 2011 ). - Optimize your living arrangements—“Make sure that ‘home’ is as stress free as
possible” (Jungbluth et al. 2011 , p. 282). - Manage your responsibilities—prioritize, organize, and keep up with require-
ments (Jungbluth et al. 2011 ). - Maintain realistic expectations—of yourself, your academic and clinical experi-
ences, and your program (Jungbluth et al. 2011 ). And pace yourself. As one
genetic counselor recommended in a study of lessons learned on the job, “Fight
your natural inclination to want to impress your colleagues and supervisors by
overworking yourself when you first start out. It is like a marathoner who has set
too fast a pace in the initial few miles, and tries to keep it up for the whole race—
it can lead to fatigue and burnout” (Runyon et al. 2010 , p. 380).
12.2.2 Burnout
Burnout is “...a critical disruption in an individual’s relationship with work, result-
ing in a state of exhaustion in which one’s occupational value and capacity to per-
form are questioned. Burnout can negatively affect an individual’s personal life, as
well as employers in terms of decreased work quality, patient/client satisfaction, and
employee retention” (Johnstone et al. 2016 , p. 731). Burnout involves “...a pro-
longed response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job and is
characterized by exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplish-
ment” (Bernhardt et al. 2009 , p. 527). Burnout is a more chronic condition than
distress, which typically is more acute; however, the same signs and symptoms of
distress may be indicators of burnout.
Burnout Prevalence and Triggers
Johnstone et al. ( 2016 ) studied genetic counselor burnout and occupational stress.
They found more than 40% of their sample “had either considered leaving or left
their job role due to burnout” (p. 731). Factors contributing to burnout included
“role overload (job demand/resource balance), role boundary (level of conflicting
role demands/loyalties), vocational strain (problems in work quality/output/atti-
tude), psychological strain (psychological/emotional problems), physical strain
(health worries/physical symptoms), role switching (switched or considered switch-
ing job role due to burnout), marital status, and patients seen per week” (Johnstone
12 Genetic Counseling Dynamics: Transference, Countertransference