Avoiding Burnout Part 3 - Burnout in the Caring Professions

The Guardian newspaper recently ran an article: How Burnout Became a Sinister Epidemic. The article describes the worrying high levels of workplace stress and burnout in the UK. It features the top three professions where burnout is most prevalent: Health Care, Social Services and Education. These professions require a high level of emotional investment, often with little reward or reciprocity. https://goo.gl/xhYfj3
The Nuffield Trust in its report Addressing Staff Burnout described the detrimental impact of "moral distress" on its staff. https://goo.gl/yxgBwE
A study by the NHS found that those working in maternity wards, for example, experienced high levels of work place stress and burnout - high emotional investment, long hours, sharing joy and pain, the impact of handling multiple births and death.
The NHS study found that working more than 40 hours per week significantly increased symptoms of work place stress and the likelihood of burnout.

• Is workplace stress and burnout a new epidemic, or are we just better at seeing the signs?
• What then can be done about Workplace Burnout, sometimes called Occupational Burnout...?