Breathlessness: Dr. Richard Cabot’s 1908 conceptualization of social work burnout

Since the 1970s much attention has been directed in the professional literature to burnout and compassion fatigue in social workers. This article will present documentation that as early as 1908 Dr. Richard Cabot, who started the first hospital social work department at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, was concerned about the same phenomenon, though he referred to it as "breathlessness." He explored what he considered to be common causes of this difficulty as well as some possible remedies for overcoming it. Primary research conducted in the collected professional papers of the late Ida Cannon, located in the Social Service Department (SSD) at MGH (Rappaport, 1996), revealed his level of concern about this phenomenon, which he shared with Ida Cannon, Director of the SSD. Cabot's conceptualization has many points in common with what has been discussed since then as social work burnout and compassion fatigue. This adds significantly to our understanding of how long this problem has occurred in social workers in the medical field and how long we have been seeking solutions for it.