Iran Occupational Health

  Background and Aims: In a healthy organization, staff's physical and mental health is as important and considerable as production and productivity. Burnout is a result of long-term tension and stress in the job environment. Its symptoms occur when employees' power and potency is not enough for the job environment demands. Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment are three dimensions of burnout. In this survey we studied the nursing job environment considering nurses' participation in hospital affairs, foundation for quality of nursing care, managerial support and leadership, staffing/resource adequacy and collegial nurse-physician relation and their effects on nurses' burnout level.

  Methods:

  This survey is a cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study to review of nursing job environment on nurses' burnout dimensions in TUMS (Tehran …) general-teaching hospitals in 1386. For this study, 214 nurses (confidence interval %95, powers %80 and attrition %30) were selected randomly. Data were gathered using Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Nursing Work Index(NWI) questionnaires filled in by studied nurses.

  The validity of these questionnaires determined using masters' instructions. To determine the reliability of NWI questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted and its reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.88. The reliability and internal validity of MBI questionnaire had been proved in previous studies. Data were analyzed by SPSS 11.5 and Logistic regression and Chi-Square test.

  Results:

  Results show that hospital type and nurses' sex have effects on lack of personal accomplishment frequency and hospital type influences lack of personal accomplishment severity. Depersonalization frequency is effected negatively by decreasing foundation for quality of nursing care (OR=2.326) and lack of managerial support and leadership (OR=4.553) and limited collegial nurse-physician relation (OR=1.339). Depersonalization severity is influenced negatively by decreasing foundation for quality of nursing care (OR=3.310). Lack of managerial support and leadership (OR=2.152) effects negatively on emotional exhaustion frequency, and finally, exhaustion severity is effected negatively by lack of foundation for quality of nursing care (OR=3.838), staffing/resource adequacy (OR=2.440) and collegial nurse-physician relation (OR=2.552). Also, logistic regression results show that all mentioned relationships (given standard errors) are positive that means increasing a variable results in increasing the other variable and vice versa.

  conclusion:

  The type and numbers of patients refer to the studied hospitals, using flexible working models, applying new working ideas, team working, participating in hospital affairs, preparing educational and preferment opportunities for employees, providing managerial support etc. have important effects on the frequency and severity of burnout dimensions.