Examining Burnout Among Nurses and its Relation to Turnover Rates - Research Paper Example

Examining Burnout Among Nurses and its Relation to Turnover Rates Here s Here A widespread shortage of nurses has increased the need to maximize employee retention in the medical industry. The experience of occupational burnout has been consistently linked with nursing turnover rates, and has accordingly drawn additional attention in the field. Burnout is observable on an international level, and has been linked to negative job outcomes as well as reduced patient safety. The occurrence of burnout among nurses requires appropriate treatments. Examining Burnout Among Nurses and its Relation to Turnover Rates Turnover Rates and Burnout The need to replace exiting employees is a potential concern for any business, as time and resources spent on training and orienting new workers can quickly become a poor investment should the employee choose to leave their position. In the medical professions, there is the added concern for patient well being when considering worker turnover rates, as the need to regularly replace employees may deprive patients of being regularly cared for by experienced practitioners. There has been a shortage of nurses in recent years, making the issue of employee turnover even more pertinent for this population of medical workers. Largely due to the shortage, there has been a surge of research that is designed to better our understanding of the factors that underlie nursing turnover rates. The concept of burnout has garnered much attention as a result of these investigations and continues to be a key idea in the attempt to improve the rate of employee retention in the nursing. Nursing turnover rates are consistently linked with job dissatisfaction in many pieces of research. Accordingly, numerous potential causes of this discontent have become the focus of more recent experiments. As discussed in Leiter and Maslach’s 2009 study, the qualitative measurement of a nurse’s working experience can be expressed as a spectrum, with engagement at the positive end and burnout as the most severe negative descriptor. This continuum serves to indicate burnout, but does not describe the concept in itself. Burnout is explained as a psychological syndrome that develops as a response to various stressors in the employment environment. The experience is typically described using three characteristics including extreme exhaustion, cynicism/detachment regarding job, and a sense of ineffectiveness. The contrasting concept of engagement involves feelings of energy, effectiveness, and accomplishment. The feeling of burnout has been identified in several pieces of literature as a major player in the processes leading to job dissatisfaction and nurse turnover rate increases. Burnout as a Mediator Leiter and Maslach (2009) explored the potential role of burnout as a mediator in the relationship between job-related stressors and worker outcomes (including turnover rates). The researchers surveyed 667 Canadian nurses to gain insight into the relationship between burnout and nurses’ intentions to quit their position. The investigators found that the mediator model of burnout was significantly accurate in predicting the relationship between stressors and turnover outcomes. However, they found that only one dimension of the concept, cynicism, was a clear predictor of turnover rates (refer to Table 1 in Leiter and Maslach’s study). The preceding evidence supports the mediating role of burnout in the job stressor-turnover relationship, with an especially large portion of mediation being attributed to the cynicism that is characteristic of the syndrome. The authors offer an interesting interpretation of the findings, suggesting that exhibiting burnout-related cynicism and quitting one’s job are both characteristic of social withdrawal. The experiment was limited by the use of self-reported questionnaires, but still offers new insights into association between nurse turnover rates and burnout. International Nursing Burnout The dilemma facing healthcare administration as a result of nursing turnover rates extends to societies across the globe. A need to address nursing shortages led to a study of Japanese nurses that examined several factors as they relate to turnover rates (Suzuki et al., 2010). The investigators focused specifically on novice nurses, as they displayed the most alarming turnover rates. A two-part approach to this examination led to the conclusion that novice nurse turnover rates were significantly affected by the presence of burnout, but not in a straightforward manner. The effect was not immediately visible in the results of the initial surveys (the use of which is a limitation of this study) but over time it became apparent that burnout had started early in the nurses’ work experiences, though it would not observably manifest until later in the workers’ careers. Among additional findings, this study suggests that workplace environment is also linked with burnout and the high turnover rate of nurses in Japan. Burnout and Working Environment A study by Van Bogaert, Clarke, Roelant, Meulemans, and Van de Heyning (2009) contributes additional information concerning international cases of nursing burnout, and the syndrome’s relationship with the workplace environment. This investigation utilized a random sample of 546 Belgian staff nurses, and was carried out to examine the influence of the immediate workplace environment (varied by specific unit assignment) on burnout and job outcomes such as those that increase the turnover rate. The use of a multilevel model analysis revealed that the positive rating of work environment is inversely related to burnout, and that the experience of burnout is associated with job outcomes. The burnout dimension of extreme exhaustion was also strongly related with job satisfaction. The authors suggest that this result represents the strain associated with nursing in general. An additional focal point of this research is the relationship between the previously described factors and quality of patient care, but the results do not offer a clear indication of this potential association. Burnout and Patient Safety Patient safety is a concern in any medical care situation, but it can become a major issue in areas where nurses are in high demand and turnover rates are high. This is the basis for a study by Teng, Cheng, and Tsu (2009) that examined the relationship between emotional stability and patient safety. The authors identify emotional stability as a novel variable that is closely related to burnout at its negative pole of measurement, so relationships with emotional stability may also accurately reflect associations with burnout. Patient safety is described as the quality of attention received by the patient (mistake-free documents for example). In this experiment, 284 Taiwanese nurses completed anonymous surveys that were itemized and analyzed using hierarchical regression. The results showed that patient safety was significantly correlated with emotional stability. These findings suggest that nurses play an important role in patient safety, and that the effectiveness of this role can vary according to factors related to emotional stability such as burnout. However, it is also noted that this study faces several limitations, including its cross-sectional design, and the use of self-reported questionnaires. Burnout Among Male Nurses A 2010 investigation by Hsu, Chen, Yu, and Lou examined the impact of burnout on the quality of care provided by male Taiwanese nurses. The authors chose to examine only one gender due to the difficulties faced by men in the nursing workforce. Stigma and stereotypes add to job stressors as experienced by a male nurse, and these factors may in turn contribute to worker burnout, culminating with employee turnover. After surveying 178 male nurses, a statistical analysis revealed that job stress is a significant predictor of burnout, and in turn is related to employee turnover intentions. It was also shown that positively regarded variables such as achievement motivation and sense of personal accomplishment were inversely correlated with occupational burnout. These findings indicate the widely felt impact of burnout on the nursing profession and associated turnover rates. Conclusion A severe shortage of nurses has been observed in many countries. Due to this shortage, the reduction of nurse turnover rates has become a primary concern among many healthcare organizations. As a result, there has been a surge in research that examines the factors that are potentially responsible for increasing turnover rates. Occupational burnout has been identified as a major contributor to nursing turnover. Burnout can act as a mediator in the relationship between stressors and job outcomes, and this relationship has proven to be consistent across several nations. The influence of a nurse’s working environment is significant in the experience of burnout, and the syndrome can affect the insurance of patient safety. These findings point to the need to control and reduce the occurrence of occupational burnout in nursing populations, and the results may be used to develop treatments through further research. References Hsu, H., Chen, S., Yu, H., & Lou, J. (2010). Job stress, achievement motivation and occupational burnout among male nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 66(7), 1592-1601. Leiter, M. P., & Maslach, C. (2009). Nurse turnover: The mediating role of burnout. Journal of Nursing Management, 17(3), 331-339. Suzuki, E., Tagaya, A., Ota, K., Nagasawa, Y., Matsuura, R., & Sato, C. (2010). Factors affecting turnover of Japanese novice nurses in university hospitals in early and later periods of employment. Journal of Nursing Management, 18(2), 194-204. Teng, C., Chang, S., & Hsu, K. (2009). Emotional stability of nurses: Impact on patient safety. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(10), 2088-2096. Van Bogaert, P., Clarke, S., Roelant, E., Meulemans, H., & Van De Heyning, P. (2010). Impacts of unit-level nurse practice environment and burnout on nurse-reported outcomes: A multilevel approach. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19(11/12), 1664-1674. Read More