The association between burnout and job characteristics of police officers

Requirements of the job in police officers were slightly higher, as compared to the large number of professions, so it is expected that a police officer must make greater efforts to cope with stress at work, i.e., to reduce the cumulative stress which is manifested in the burnout. To achieve this, police officers must strengthen and develop stable personality traits to cope with stress easier in the workplace. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between experience of the burnout and job characteristics of police officers. For this purpose, the questionnaire about the properties of the job of the police officers in the corresponding organizational units and on their burnout is applied. A sample of 56 students from second year of the specialist study of Criminalistics in Zagreb, was examined. It has been confirmed that there is a number of statistically significant correlations between certain aspects of the experience of burnout and certain characteristics of work of police officers. Simply put, it appears that in the undoubtedly stressful job of police officers, significant prevention of burnout can be provided by the social support of colleagues and superiors, but the specifics of each individual, should be taken into account.