Nursing in Primary Health Care: association between leadership, psychological capital, and burnout implications

Abstract

Objectives: to verify the association between authentic leadership and burnout syndrome in Primary Health Care nursing professionals and analyze the relationship between positive psychological capital and burnout syndrome in subordinate nursing professionals. Methods: a field, descriptive-exploratory, cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach, developed with the nursing team, in Basic Health Units in the city of São Paulo, with the application of the sociodemographic questionnaires, Burnout Characterization Scale [Escala de Caracterização do Burnout], Authentic Leadership Questionnaire and Psychological Capital Questionnaire. Results: in leaders’ perception, there was no evidence of significant associations between burnout and authentic leadership scales. There was a significant negative association of the burnout scale dimensions with the leadership dimensions regarding the subordinates. There was evidence of significant negative associations in the burnout scores with the scores of the psychological questionnaire dimensions. Conclusions: in nursing, burnout is associated with authentic leadership and psychological capital.

Psychological capital has a positive correlation with humanistic care ability among nurses

“…A growing body of evidence highlights the unique, independent role of positive emotion in promoting adaptive coping in the face of stress (Cheung et al, 2020). From an optimist's point of view, negative events are transient, of an external cause, and specific to a given fact, and the positive events are linked to internal issues that are more permanent and recurrent (Almeida and Miclos, 2022). Optimists are more likely to provide humanistic care to patients to cope with a disease positively.…”