Download Lagu Fly High Burnout Syndrome
Erinn Hickel
According to the specialized literature, nurses with high levels of burnout feel emotionally exhausted at the end of the day due to an imbalance between workload and occupational resources, with an inability to attend to the social and emotional needs of family members or patients [8].
After two years, since the COVID-19 pandemic started in our country, only 36.25% (n = 29) of the nurses in the Emergency Department showed a high level of burnout. Regarding the burnout syndrome scales, the following results were obtained: Emotional exhaustion (EE) had an average value of 23.4 points (62.5%), depersonalization (DP) had an average value of 17.7 points (48.7%) and the low personal accomplishment scale (AP) had an average value of 27 points (60%). We can say that the burnout syndrome that manifested in the Emergency Department among nurses reached a high level (Table 2).
After two years, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in our country, the results show a high risk of Burnout syndrome among the medical staff in the Emergency Department, with approximately one third of the subjects presenting a high risk of burnout and showing increased values in all Burnout syndrome dimensions. The data demonstrate a high prevalence of burnout in frontline nurses, with similar values reported in the literature [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. The overall prevalence of Burnout syndrome among nurses is high, proving that the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic is a major stressor for nurses [25,26]. In this research, we found significant correlation coefficients between burnout dimensions and burnout criteria. The three dimensions are significantly related to the Burnout syndrome. Burnout related to emotional exhaustion is the dimension that contributes the most to the degree of exhaustion.
Significant correlations were obtained between the dimensions of the Burnout syndrome and the scales of professional satisfaction, which confirms that there is a positive relationship between the two aspects and nurses who present a high risk of burnout associate increased professional satisfaction.
Nurses in Emergency Departments are physically and mentally stressed due to the high volume of patients with various pathologies, poor working conditions (working in the pre-hospital, and high noise level), lifting weights (patient, stretcher and other medical equipment), and the nature of the work favoring the onset of burnout [33].
Third, in Romania, there are not many studies about the Burnout syndrome of nurses working in the Emergency Department, therefore this study has not only a scientific value but also a practical one. After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical staff from the Emergency Departments show a certain degree of burnout, and prompting intervention is necessary in their case.