Nursing Burnout
Nursing Burnout
Nursing burnout is a major area of concern as it relates to human resource development and patient care. As nurses reach burnout, their job satisfaction declines, and errors in patient care increase. This study sought to determine what work environment characteristics most relate to an increase in burn out, across multiple departments, in the hospital setting. In other words, the research question was: regardless of nursing area, are there certain factors that increase nurses’ experience of burnout. The hypothesis was that certain personal characteristics, work conditions, and relationships between colleges would all contribute to burnout, thus negatively impacting patient care.
The method employed in the study was collection data from both nurses and patients’ families. More specifically, a sample of 225 nurses responded via the Maslach Burnout Inventory and 222 patient relatives responded via the Nursing Services Satisfaction Inventory. This data was then analyzed via the Statistical Package for Social Science 15.0 software program. Within that program “satisfaction was determined by considering the difference between the “mean scores of perception, and expectation of patients,” additionally the parametric test assumption was checked. (Tekindal et al., 70). Further, in areas where assumptions were justified, matching t-tests were performed, for both groups, in order to find significant variant analysis via Tukey’s test. For those variables determined to be significant, Bonferroni multiple comparison test was then carried out. “Wilcoxon matching was used when assumptions were not justified for two dependent groups, Mann–Whitney U-test was used for independent groups and Kruskal– Wallis test was used for the comparison of more than two groups. Dunn multiple comparison tests with Bonferroni correction test were used for the variables that found out to be significant in the Kruskal–Wallis analysis” (Tekindal et al., 70). The study concluded that burnout levels among nurses are high, and impacted by age, experience, work environment, and education level. Further, the research found that as a result of burn out, patient needs are not being met, from the perception of relatives.
The primary limitation of the findings, from my perspective, was that while there may have been a statistical correlation between burnout and patient care satisfaction, this study was not capable of indicating causation. As a result, the collection of patient data did not feel fully integrated, and became a side note to the study of burnout. The study of burnout would have been stronger if it had focused more completely on the underlying factors that contribute to nurse burnout and how they can be reduced.
The application of the study, as it relates to the field of nursing, is in recognizing that there is a need to reduce burnout, both to protect patients, and ensure their needs are being met, and to protect nurses, professionally, from low job satisfaction and eventual election to leave the medical field. Nurses are in high demand, and nurses who work in high-stress scenarios like those described by this study need to be approached professionally, in such a way that burnout is avoided. As stated in the study’s introduction, burnout is entirely preventable by controlling the underlying factors that push nurses toward negative professional action. As such, applying what was learned from the study as it relates to underlying causes, and managing those causes effectively is key.
Future research would do well to focus on the impact on burnout on patient satisfaction separately. It would be interesting to study, as well, the underlying causes of nurse stress, as they relate to patient care, separately to determine if certain factors have a greater impact on patient care than others.
References:
Tekindal, B., Tekindal, M. A., Pinar, G., Ozturk, F., & Alan, S. (2012). Nurses' burnout and unmet nursing care needs of patients' relatives in a Turkish State Hospital. International Journal of Nursing Practice,18(1), 68-76. doi:10.1111/j.1440-172x.2011.01989.x
