The Nursing Burnout: Causes and Consequences

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Reasons for Nursing Burnout
Consequences of Nursing Burnout
Interventions
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The quality of healthcare primarily depends on professionals who provide patient care. However, the lack of staff and the need to serve more patients leads to overwork of professionals and burnout. This problem is common in the United States and leads to high turnover and reduced quality of care. Consequently, this problem requires detailed study from different perspectives to overcome it. For this reason, this literature review will examine the issue of nursing burnout from the perspective of causes, consequences, and interventions to find knowledge gaps and address them in future research.

Reasons for Nursing Burnout

A study of the literature demonstrates that many authors have considered various factors affecting nursing burnout. Mudallal et al. (2017) identify in their research that the main factors leading to burnout are high workload during shifts, low levels of autonomy, and inability to take part in decision-making. Dall’Ora et al. (2020), in a systematic review, confirms the influence of these factors and also notes the impact of such aspects as poor social climate and low rewards.

Other authors also look at nurses’ personal traits that are predictors of burnout. Pérez-Fuentes et al. (2018) note that low emotional intelligence, in particular the ability to manage emotions, interpersonal communication skills, and stress management, is a factor that reduces resistance to burnout. At the same time, Manomenidis et al. (2017) find that nurses with high self-esteem are less likely to experience burnout. Thus, scientific research demonstrates that the topic of factors affecting nursing burnout is well-researched.

Consequences of Nursing Burnout

The second category of literature examines the impact of burnout on health care quality. Pérez-Francisco et al. (2020) find that high workload causing burnouts degrades patient care and safety. Dall’Ora et al. (2020) add that the consequences can be adverse events, reduced job performance, medication errors, infections, low patient satisfaction, and intention to leave. The intention to leave is also associated with many factors that influence how nurses perceive their work. Ruiz-Fernández et al. (2020) determine that burnout leads to nurses’ illness, compassion fatigue, and low compassion satisfaction. In other words, nurses feel both physical exhaustion and emotional stress. However, there is no study in the literature that looks at the effect of burnout on nursing empathy, which is one of the keys to quality care.

Interventions

Many researchers study the impact of different interventions to prevent burnout based on specific factors. Adams et al. (2019) find that cultural changes such as increased leader engagement and support, shared decision making, and meaningful recognition reduce the likelihood of nursing burnout. At the same time, Wu et al. (2020) determined that supportive transformational leadership can prevent nursing burnout while a positive spiritual climate increases the value of nursing work. These articles show that since one of the leading causes of burnout, such as high workload, cannot be overcome in the current circumstances, nurses must take action that can reduce the impact of the problem.

Conclusion

Thus, a literature review demonstrates that most aspects of nursing burnout are well researched; nevertheless, the literature has one significant gap. The researchers did not look at the impact of burnout on nursing empathy, which can be increased or decreased due to physical and mental fatigue. A nurse who cannot be empathetic cannot fully understand the emotional needs of patients, while a nurse who takes patients’ problems too closely cannot cope with emotional stress. Therefore, since this ability is one of the key skills for a nurse to work with patients and their families, its correlation with burnout needs to be studied.

References

Adams, A., Hollingsworth, S., & Osman, A. (2019). The implementation of a cultural change toolkit to reduce nursing burnout and mitigate nurse turnover in the emergency department. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 45(4), 452-456. Web.

Dall’Ora, C., Ball, J., Reinius, M., & Griffiths, P. (2020). Burnout in nursing: A theoretical review. Human Resources for Health, 18, 1-17. Web.

Manomenidis, G., Kafkia, T., Minasidou, E., Tasoulis, C., Koutra, S., Kospantsidou, A., & Dimitriadou, A. (2017). Is self-esteem actually the protective factor of nursing burnout? International Journal of Caring Sciences, 10(3), 1348-1359.

Mudallal, R. H., Othman, W. M., & Al Hassan, N. F. (2017). Nurses’ burnout: The influence of leader empowering behaviors, work conditions, and demographic traits. Inquiry: A Journal Of Medical Care Organization, Provision And Financing, 54, 1-10. Web.

Pérez-Francisco, D. H., Duarte-Clíments, G., del Rosario-Melián, J. M., Gómez-Salgado, J., Romero-Martín, M., & Sánchez-Gómez, M. B. (2020). Influence of workload on primary care nurses’ health and burnout, patients’ safety, and quality of care: Integrative review. Healthcare, 8(1), 1-14. Web.

Pérez-Fuentes, M. del, Molero-Jurado, M. del, Gázquez-Linares, J. J., & Simón-Márquez, M. del. (2018). Analysis of burnout predictors in nursing: Risk and protective psychological factors. The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 11(1), 33–40. Web.

Ruiz-Fernández, M. D., Pérez-García, E., & Ortega-Galán, Á. M. (2020). Quality of life in nursing professionals: Burnout, fatigue, and compassion satisfaction. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(4), 1-12. Web.

Wu, X., Hayter, M., Lee, A. J., Yuan, Y., Li, S., Bi, Y., Zhang, L., Cao, C., Gong, W., & Zhang, Y. (2020). Positive spiritual climate supports transformational leadership as means to reduce nursing burnout and intent to leave. Journal of Nursing Management, 28(4), 804–813. Web.

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