A Scoping Review of Burnout Avoidance by Employees During COVID-19 Through Achieving Psychological Flow

Background: Burnout is a significant problem for employees—particularly concerning COVID-19 and involving healthcare workers. One way for employees to avoid work-related burnout is to experience the psychological flow investigated by Csikszentmihalyi. Yet, COVID-19 may have contributed to the unattainability of psychological flow for burnout-prone employees. The objective is to determine the COVID-19 achievability of flow by employees and, if attained, whether flow resulted in burnout avoidance during the pandemic. Method: To examine the topic range of research, a scoping review includes searches of six primary databases (CINAHL, OVID, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science), two searches of one supplementary database (Google Scholar), and one register (Cochrane COVID-19 register) of the keywords “burnout, COVID-19, employees, healthcare providers, psychological flow, Csikszentmihalyi”. Included are peer-reviewed, COVID-19-related, 2020-2025 journal publications. The exclusions are duplicates, non-COVID-19-related publications, reports lacking a research study, keywords, or relevant information. Results: In identifying 754 records, five records met the inclusion criteria. Conclusions: Psychological flow was possible during COVID-19 for various employee types, represents the opposite of burnout regarding a workplace stimulation scale, and attaining it permitted burnout avoidance, suggesting a focus on achieving flow in the workplace during pandemics would diminish the incidence of employee burnout.