Nursing burnout is associated with reduced nursing performance outcomes. Positive psychological capital is known to play an important role in improving workers’ job performance. However, the association among the three variables has rarely been addressed. The purpose of this cross-sectional descriptive study was to explore the association between burnout and nursing performance outcomes among Korean nurses working at a tertiary hospital and the mediating role of psychological capital in this relationship. Recruited through convenience sampling, a total of 285 nurses provided data on their demographic characteristics and completed a structured questionnaire consisting of items from the Professional Quality of Life Scale (burnout), Nursing Performance Scale, and Psychology Capital Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, student’s t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, and multiple linear regression analyses were used to analyze data. The significance of the mediation effect was obtained using a bootstrap approach with the PROCESS macro. The mean age of participants was 30.51 years, and most participants were females (94.0%) and unmarried (71.6%); more than half (57.5%) experienced a severe workload. The average (±standard deviation) scores of burnout, nursing performance outcomes, and positive psychological capital were 28.77 ± 4.93, 2.98 ± 0.32, and 3.19 ± 0.45, respectively. Burnout was associated with nursing performance among clinical nurses (β = −0.20, p < 0.001). Positive psychological capital mediated the association between burnout and nursing performance outcomes (β = 0.41, p < 0.001). These findings contribute to the understanding that burnout among nurses could be reduced by increased positive psychological capital, which results in improved performance outcomes. The findings also indicate that interventions to improve positive psychological capital should be developed and implemented for nurses’ burnout management and improvement in nursing performance outcomes.

The aim of this research was to identify the relationships between occupational stress, ethical dilemma, burnout and turnover intention and the factors influencing turnover intention in hospital nurses. Methods: The participants, 215 nurses, were recruited from two university hospitals located in two provinces of Korea. Data were collected through self-report questionnaires. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients, and multiple regression with SPSS/WIN 22.0. Results: Participants' scores for occupational stress, ethical dilemma, burnout and turnover intention were 3.96±0.45, 2.60±0.39, 3.71±0.70, and 3.50±0.90 respectively. The results show that the higher the score for occupational stress, ethical dilemma, and burnout the higher the score for turnover intention. The most important factor influencing turnover intention was burnout (β=.42, p<.001), followed by position (β=.21, p=.001), educational level (β=.21, p=.007), ethical dilemma (β=.13, p=.020) in that order. These factors explained 43.5% of total variance in turnover intention (F=19.34, p<.001). Conclusion: Changes in hospital structural management systems and support strategies should be developed and operated, taking into account burnout, ethical dilemma, and personal characteristics of clinical nurses in order to reduce turnover.