Occupational and Psychological Factors Associated With Burnout in Night Shift Nurses

OBJECTIVE: Providing inpatient nursing care inevitably involves night shift work. However, night shift work nurses often face psychiatric health problems such as burnout. If night shift work is an essential work type for nurses, it is necessary to select personnel suitable for night shift work or establish improvement measures such as psychiatric intervention through psychiatric evaluation. The objective of this study was to identify factors that could be interventional among factors affecting burnout in shift-working nurses. METHODS: A total of 231 night shift female nurses participated in this study. A questionnaire survey was given to assess their general characteristics. To assess burnout, the Maslach Burnout Inventory–General Survey Korean version was adopted. In addition, several mental health scales were used to identify individual psychological characteristics. To identify variables associated with the presence of burnout, odds ratios were calculated using a logistic regression model taking three dimensions of burnout as a dependent variable after adjusting for psychological and occupational factors. RESULTS: High resilience was a significant preventive factor in the three dimensions of burnout. Regarding occupational factor, the longer the duration of employment, the higher depersonalization, but the professional efficacy was good. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that resilience and social support could be prevention factors for burnout. This study is meaningful in examining items that require active intervention and support for burnout targeting night shift nurses who are indispensable for patient care.