Exploration of burnout syndrome in nurses of general hospital in Larnaka of Cyprus

Health professionals belong to the group of high risk to develop burn out syndrome. According to Maslach & Jackson, "emotional exhaustion", "depersonalization" and the "reduced feeling of personal accomplishment" are the three parameters that consist the burn out syndrome. The aim of the present study was to explore burn out syndrome among nursing workforce in General Hospital of Larnaka in Cyprus. Method and material: The sample studied consisted of 100 nurses coming from 10 different departments of the hospital. Data were collected by the completion of a specially designed questionnaire for the needs of the research which apart from the socio-demographic variables included Maslach burn out questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted by the statistical package SPSS 16 and the statistical method was t-test and Anova. Results: From the 100 participants, 76% were women and 24% men. The mean age of the participants was 35,8 years old. The results showed that the participants experienced median level of burnout syndrome. Men of the sample studied experienced higher level of "emotional exhaustion" with average value 19,4 and "depersonalization" with average value 7,5 whereas reduced feeling of personal accomplishment with average 39,7. Married participants had "emotional exhaustion" with average value 20,2, "depersonalization" with average 7,6 and "feeling of personal accomplishment" with average 38,5. Presence of children had positive relation with all subscales and more specifically those who had 3 and more children had 21,1 average value of "emotional disturbance", 7,9 average "depersonalization" and 40,5 average value of "feeling of personal accomplishment". Nurses with 1-5 years previous experience had 19,9 average value of "emotional exhaustion", 7,7 of "depersonalization" and 38,7 of "feeling of personal accomplishment". Statistical analysis showed no relation with socio-demographic variables of nurses with burn out syndrome. Conclusions: It is an imperative need to explore in depth burn out syndrome as well as the risk factors (personal and environmental) so that hospitals take all the necessary steps to prevent this syndrome that has detrimental effects not only on the nurses' quality of life but also on the provision of quality of care.

Keywords: Βurn out syndrome, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, reduced feeling of personal accomplishment, nursing staff