Burnout among nurses

Introduction: The process of occupational burnout develops slowly; its initial symptoms are discreet, they increase progressively and become manifest suddenly, with great power. The burnout syndrome constitutes a serious personal and social problem whose cause lies in the workplace or is work-related. Aim of the research: To assess occupational burnout of nurses and the sense of satisfaction with career. Material and methods: The study covered 100 nurses working for the Health Care Unit in Dąbrowa Tarnowska. The method of a diagnostic poll was used in the research. A survey questionnaire regarding career and the standardised Maslach Burnout Inventory were the research tools used. The calculations were made with the use of the IBM SPSS Statistics 20 software. The adopted statistical significance was p < 0.05. Results: As many as 48% of the nurses felt job satisfaction. Among 41% of the nurses a high level of a burnout related with emotional exhaustion was determined, and 63% of the nurses felt a low level of burnout related to depersonalisation. Lack of the feeling of personal achievements was the cause of the high level of burnout in 62% of the surveyed. The average result of burnout scale was 50.34 points, indicating that 38% of the nurses were threatened with burnout. The age of the studied nurses, place of work (ward), and feeling the need for further education do not influence the frequency of occupational burnout occurrence. Conclusions: Good relationships within a therapeutic team and support from the ward head nurse are strongly linked with the feeling of less occupational burnout.