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Prolongation of life expectancy increases the likelihood of death caused by chronic illness and the need for medical and psychosocial support within the palliative care setting. Professionals working in the palliative care field need adequate education to work with dying patients in order to achieve greater expertise, but also to prevent professional burnout. The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of personal (i.e. communication skills, resistance, religiosity) and factors related to the work environment (i.e. social support) in explaining burnout (i.e. emotional exhaustion and disengagement) among palliative care professionals. The study was conducted on a sample of 123 professionals working in the palliative care setting (nurses, physicians, psychologists, theologians, social workers, physiotherapists, etc.). The results indicate that personal risk/protection factors, compared to work environment factors, were more closely related to burnout, especially when emotional exhaustion was considered. On the other hand, both personal and environmental factors had a significant role in the prediction of disengagement from work. The most significant predictor of both aspects of burnout was the communication skill of reporting bad news.

This study examines the interrelations of three different aspects of the subjective age: felt, desired and expected, as well as their relations with the chronological age (CA), health, and psychological well-being variables. Four hundred and twenty-three community-dwelling Croatian adults, aged 60–95 years, participated in the study. All three subjective age measures significantly correlated with the CA. Self-rated health were better predictors of the subjective age compared to the psychological variables. Among psychological variables, successful aging was the only significant predictor of the felt and expected age, while optimism showed to be the only significant predictor of the desired age. Results indicate the importance of some sociodemographic, psychological, and health variables for understanding older persons' subjective age identity and their desires and expectations regarding length of life. Besides the CA, it is very useful to include subjective age measures in research with elderly people.