Nurses' emotional exhaustion in different care settings

What is it about?

Nurses are exposed to many stressors in their profession. A secondary analysis of representative data from German nurses showed that nurses in hospitals, in nursing homes and in home health care are affected by emotional exhaustion, a core symptom of burnout, in roughly equal proportions. We found that working at weekends and the feeling of being at the limit of efficiency are risk factors for emotional exhaustion in all settings. Emotional demands are a risk factor for nurses working in home care and in nursing homes while low team cooperation is a risk factor for nurses working in nursing homes. Nurses' emotional exhaustion is associated with more sick leave days.

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Due to the different working conditions in the three care settings, it is essential to develop appropriate and suitable interventions for preventing and dealing with nurses’ emotional exhaustion. The demonstrated relationship between nurses’ emotional exhaustion and sickness absence underline the urgency for policymakers and nurse management to change and improve the underlying working conditions.