Work
Burnout check
7+ questions · 5 min
This questionnaire looks at burnout, meaning long-lasting physical and emotional exhaustion. It gives a score for how worn out you feel in general and, if you work, how much of that you link to your work. If you work with patients, clients or others you care for or serve, it also shows how much comes from that part of your work.
Each score runs from 0 to 100, where higher means more exhaustion. There’s no single overall score, because the parts tell you different things.
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What it shows
How worn out you feel in general and, if they apply to you, from your work and from working with people you care for or serve.
What it doesn’t
A diagnosis, or a judgement of how good you are at your job.
Who it’s for
This is for you if you’ve been running on empty: tired most of the time, struggling to recover on days off, or dreading the next working day. It’s worth doing whether or not you work, because the first part looks at exhaustion in general.
If you work with patients, clients, pupils or others you care for or serve, for example in health, social care or teaching, it also looks separately at how much of the strain comes from that part of your work.
Questions people ask
What does the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory measure?
It measures long-lasting physical and emotional exhaustion in up to three areas: your life in general, your work, and your work with the people you look after. Each area gets its own score, because they can tell you different things.
How long does the burnout test take?
About 5 minutes. Everyone answers 6 questions about exhaustion in general. If you work, there are 7 more about your work, and if you work with people you care for or serve, 6 more about that.
How is the CBI scored?
Each answer is turned into a number from 0 to 100, and each part’s score is the average of its answers. Higher means more exhaustion. There’s no overall score, and your results are described in rough thirds: little, some or a lot of exhaustion.
Is this a diagnosis of burnout?
No. It isn’t a diagnosis, and it isn’t a judgement of how good you are at your job. If you feel exhausted, a doctor is the right person to help work out what’s going on.
How often can I retake it?
About once a month. That’s often enough to notice change, for example after a holiday, a shift in workload or time off.
What should I do if my scores are high?
A doctor can help you look at what’s wearing you out and how to recover, including whether you need time off. Talking to someone you trust, at work or at home, can help too.
Where it comes from
Developed by Tage Kristensen and colleagues at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in Copenhagen for a study of people in human service work, published in 2005.
Copenhagen Burnout Inventory
On iPhone or iPad?
Sprout is an app there too, and this link opens the test straight away if you have it.
Coming soon to the App Store