Workplace Aggression and Burnout in Nursing—The Moderating Role of Follow-Up Counseling

Abstract

The aim of this study is to obtain a better understanding of the association between the frequency of nurses’ exposure to workplace aggression from patients and their levels of burnout. In particular, we seek to shed light on the role of the availability of follow-up counseling in organizations after critical incidents in mitigating the adverse relationships between physical and verbal aggression and nurses’ burnout. A total of 582 nurses reported how frequently they had experienced physical and verbal aggression from patients in the last 12 months and whether they had the opportunity to receive follow-up counseling in their organization. In addition, nurses rated the extent to which they experienced each of the three dimensions of burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment). The results showed that both physical and verbal aggression were substantially related to the burnout dimensions. Furthermore, we found that the availability of follow-up counseling in organizations attenuated the relationships between physical aggression and all three burnout dimensions. While we found that the availability of follow-up counseling moderated the relationship between verbal aggression depersonalization, the moderating effects were not significant for emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment. The findings indicate that the availability of follow-up counseling might help minimize the adverse impact of exposure to aggression from patients on nurses’ mental health.

Doctors and Nurses: A Systematic Review of the Risk and Protective Factors in Workplace Violence and Burnout

“…According to some studies, it was shown that WV decreased significantly when using this method [ 88 ]. In that sense, it is important to note that workplace violence is one of the possible causes of burnout in the health sector [ 81 ].…”

Tipos de violência no trabalho da enfermagem na Estratégia Saúde da Família

“…Regarding violence, 69% of the cases are episodes involving patients. 3 Some studies 4,5 have highlighted that violence in healthcare services mainly affects workers who are responsible for the first direct communication with patients and their families, i.e., Nursing professionals, making them more vulnerable. Research in other countries has indicated that, among health professionals, the highest prevalence of episodes of violence involves nurses.…”

“…Research in other countries has indicated that, among health professionals, the highest prevalence of episodes of violence involves nurses. 4,6,7 The frequent experience of exposure contributes to the severity of the problem, since workers are frequent victims of this phenomenon, potentially in the Family Health Strategy (FHS). 8,9 Among the health scenarios in Brazil, the FHS stands out as the main model of Primary Health Care (PHC) in the country and an important service in the context of the Unified Health System (UHS).…”

Inovation for Nurses Burnout Intervention: A Systematic Review

“…Although, the nurse could bear moderate to severe levels of burnout, but still the nurse performance tended to increase when the high level of positive psychological capital and communication skill have been embedded in the nurse. Hence, it needed to develop a customized and/or strategies that were concerned on the realization of positive psychological capital and provide several levels of burnout intervention for nurses, so it could maintain and/or improve the nursing performance outcomes (Vincent-Höper et al, 2020).…”

“…A research done by Vincent-Hoper, et al (2020) has found that the availability of follow-up counseling program in an organization was able to decline the relationship between physical assault and three burnout dimensions. Furthermore, the results also recommended that the follow-up counseling should be available for the nurses, since it could help reducing negative impacts on nurse mental health from the assault action taken by the patient (Vincent-Höper et al, 2020).…”