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The concept of burnout describes a number of destructive aspects in work relationships. In this study, the relations between psychiatric staff members' feelings towards their patients and burnout were analyzed. Staff feelings were measured with a feeling checklist, and burnout with BM (Burnout Measure) and MBI (Maslach's Burnout Inventory). The staff at 28 treatment units rated their feelings towards the patients as a group. The results indicated that high burnout was associated with negative feelings and low levels of burnout with positive feelings towards patients. The correlation patterns for the different measures of burnout were somewhat different. BM had the strongest correlations with unhelpful and rejecting feelings towards patients, whereas Personal accomplishment, one dimension of MBI, was most strongly correlated with accepting and close feelings. The results were interpreted as opening for the question whether negative staff feelings towards patients most profitably can be seen as an aspect of burnout or whether these two phenomena should be distinguished clinically and theoretically. © 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.