Burnout in Psychiatric Nurses: Contributions of the Work Environment and a Sense of Coherence

Abstract

Burnout not only affects psychiatric nurses' ability to provide optimal patient care, but its consequences extend to the nurse's psychological and physical health. Couched in a cognitive-transactional model, the broad aim of the current study was to measure burnout levels for psychiatric nurses and to determine the respective roles of the environment and the individual on burnout levels. Burnout levels were measured using Maslach and Jackson's (1986) Burnout Inventory. Environmental variables measured included work load, collegial support. role conflict and role ambiguity. Finally, Antonovsky's (1987) sense of coherence (SOC) measured the characteristics of the individual. Although burnout levels were generally high, a low sense of personal accomplishment was particularly problematic. Emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation correlated significantly with all factors of the work environment and with the SOC. Personal accomplishment related only to role conflict. Multiple regression analyses showed the sense of coherence and work load to explain a large proportion of both emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, and role conflict to explain a small but significant amount of the variance in personal accomplishment. Moderated multiple regression analyses added to a growing body of research pointing towards a possible direct effect of the SOC on burnout.

Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Emergency Service Ambulance Personnel

“…primary victims). Numerous international studies and the associated literature have focused on this secondary victim category, for example: journalists (Revel, 1996), psychologists (Nathan, 1989), police officers (Heinman, 1975;Mock, 1998;Stevens, 1997), nurses (Dyregov & Thyhodt, 1988;Epperson-Sebour, 1985;Levert, Lucas & Ortlepp 2000;Pelkowitz, 1997) and therapists (Saakvitne & Pearlman, 1996). Stevens (1997) describes the deleterious effects of trauma on workers who are exposed to potentially traumatic events as part of their professional duty to help primary victims of crime, accidents or disasters, and found a 13% prevalence of PTSD within the New Zealand police force.…”

Effect of personal and work stress on burnout, job satisfaction and general health of hospital nurses in South Africa

“…The MBI-HSS is a reliable measure of burnout among nurses with Cronbach alpha values of 0.90 for EE, 0.71 for DP and 0.79 for PA (Maslach et al, 1996). It is reliable among South African nurses with Cronbach alpha coefficients exceeding 0.70 for all subscales (emotional exhaustion 0.78, depersonalization 0.74 and personal accomplishment 0.75) (Levert, Lucas, & Ortlepp, 2000).…”

Burnout in dental students: effectiveness of different methods

“…In the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, for the Portuguese version of the MBI-SS, an appropriate adjustment of the sample to the three-factor model was observed (χ 2 To obtain an adequate factor adjustment of OLBI-SS, items 8, 9 and 14 were excluded since they presented sub-optimal factor weights (λ<.50). It is noteworthy that items with lower factor weights are those whose answer scale is inverted.…”

“…It is a multidimensional syndrome composed by emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced job satisfaction, resulting from the process of response to chronic occupational stress 1,2 .…”