Burnout among Workers in a Pediatric Health Care System

Abstract

Burnout among health care workers is recognized as an organizational risk contributing to absenteeism, presenteeism, excessive turnover, or illness, and may also manifest as decreased patient satisfaction. Pediatric health care may add stressors including worried parents of ill or dying children, child custody issues, child abuse, and workplace violence. The purpose of this study was to measure burnout among workers in a regional pediatric health care system and report whether burnout in a pediatric health care system is different from previously published data on human service workers. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) were used to measure burnout. Pediatric health care workers expressed significantly less burnout as compared to published MBI-HSS scores and client-related CBI scores. Personal burnout CBI scores were not different, but work-related CBI scores were significantly higher than normative scores.

Safety climate, emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction among Brazilian paediatric professional nurses

“…In the present study, one out of every four respondents considered themselves to be emotionally exhausted, and this prevalence was higher than another study conducted in a paediatric unit, in which 13% of professionals nursing exhibited high levels of emotional exhaustion (Jacobs et al. ). However, the emotional exhaustion reported by the respondents in the present study is lower than that reported by professionals from adult care units, as Brazilian (Panunto & Guirardello ) and international studies showed (Aiken et al.…”

“…Studies conducted in paediatric care units have demonstrated the prevalence of high levels of emotional exhaustion among professionals, especially among nurses (Jacobs et al. ; Profit et al. ).…”

“…Emotional exhaustion affects both professional and patient safety and may be multifactorial: stressful environment, excessive workload, lack of autonomy and recognition, difficulties in relationships with colleagues, and imbalance between personal and professional lives (Jacobs et al. ; Wilson ). Patient safety improves when nurses perceive their work environment as favourable for professional practice (Kirwan et al.…”

“…Nurses who work in the paediatric setting are exposed to additional stressors, such as the presence of parents experiencing continuous suffering as a consequence of their child's disease or impending death, problems related with the child's custody, cases of sexual abuse and domestic violence, which may contribute to increase the probability of burnout among such professionals (Jacobs et al. ). However, there are no studies assessing the relationship between quality of care, child and family safety, job satisfaction and the professionals' emotional exhaustion in Brazilian paediatric care units.…”

Nursing practice environment, job outcomes and safety climate: a structural equation modelling analysis

“…In childcare units, several factors can be identified as aggravating circumstances for the risk to health: the child's vulnerability to stress, parental suffering, the multiplicity of diseases and the developmental stage (Jacobs et al . , Alves et al . ).…”