When Dreams Don't Work: Professional Caregivers and Burnout presents a fresh perspective on burnout. This book examines the origins and qualities of the dreams (visions) of professional caregivers and the ways those very qualities are risk factors for burnout. ""When Dreams Don't Work: Professional Caregivers and Burnout"" also looks at the institutions in which professional caregivers (medical, educational, pastoral, law enforcement, and firefighting) invest their professional dreams, and how those institutions contribute to the burnout process.

For nearly three decades, Sandra Bertman has been exploring the power of the arts and belief--symbols, metaphors, stories--to alleviate psychological and spiritual pain not only of patients, grieving family members, and affected communities but also of the nurses, clergy and physicians who minister to them. Her training sessions and clinical interventions are based on the premise that bringing out the creative potential inherent in each of us is just as relevant-- perhaps more so--as psychiatric theory and treatment models since grief and loss are an integral part of life. Thus, this work was...