ABSTRACT
Stress and social support among employees and caregivers in health organizations remain enduring subjects of interest for health organization researchers and practitioners. Researchers have investigated a variety of issues related to these subjects, ranging from identifying the communicative antecedents of burnout, to determining the “bottom-line” outcomes of stress in areas such as reduced worker commitment and increased turnover, to studying the messages and structures that may help employees cope with workplace stress and burnout. These various lines of scholarship reveal that stress, burnout, and social support are communicative processes that are central to our understanding of health organizations and their members. This literature shows that stress and burnout present ongoing challenges to health providers and their institutional employers. While there is no one “silver bullet” that will solve these problems, social support off ers a promising avenue through which individuals and organizations can deal eff ectively with stress and burnout.
