A 'New Pandemic' at Hand: Burnout of Nursing Staff

ABSTRACT

Background: The main risk factors for the occurrence of burnout in nurses include difficult working conditions prevailing in a hospital premise and complex relationships that may develop with other staff or patients. Caring for patients is a truly burdensome task that puts substantial physical and psychological pressure on nurses. Objective: the aim of this critical review is to elaborate on the escalating phenomenon of nursing burnout and the factors associated with it across a variety of health care systems and to identify a common sequence that explains the phenomena in routine clinical terms and within contemporary practice. Methods: For this review's needs, a critical search was undertaken in MEDLINE, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. Both quantitative primary empirical studies and qualitative which examined associations between burnout and work-related factors in the nursing workforce. Articles included were published either in English or in Greek, predominately within the last decade. Results: There are four main elements that are highly associated with nursing burnout. These factors include Effects of burnout on nursing staff, Symptoms of burnout, Quality of patient care and Prevention of burnout. These can be found in table 1 together with their sub-categories. These will be further elaborated upon and critically appraised in the next section, i.e. discussion. Discussion: Nursing burnout has a direct effect on the care provided for patients and studies report that high emotional exhaustion, high depersonalization and low personal goals result in poor quality of care provided to patients. Achieving personal goals is related to better quality of care and emotional exhaustion results in a low quality of care provided by the nursing staff. Conclusions: As the nursing workforce represents the largest section within health care workers and given their valuable input as recently proven during the COVID-19 pandemic, and since the nurse workforce is predominantly female and married, their domestic responsibilities on top of a highly demanding shift work can only increase their overall burden and risk of burnout.