Quality of professional life of mental health nurses. A systematic review.

Background: Mental health nurses face particularly difficult situations in the workplace, such as isolation, physical and verbal attacks and suicide attempts due to the nature of their patients' psychiatric disorders. Aim: The aim of the systematic review was to investigate the QoPL of nurses in the field of mental health and the factors related to it. Material-Method: Systematic literature review carried out from February – April 2023 in international bibliographic databases (Medline, PubMed, Scopus). The inclusion criteria set were that the studies be primary studies, the sample of studies concern nurses in the field of mental health, be published in the English language, be published after 2015 and that there is free access to the articles. After the search, 392 articles were identified and after evaluation only 12 met the criteria for inclusion in the systematic review. Results: Mental health nurses may often experience higher stress and burnout than people in other professions. Nurses working in psychiatric clinics have a low level of compassion satisfaction, a low level of burnout, and a moderate level of post-traumatic stress. Correlations were observed between compassion satisfaction and job burnout, compassion satisfaction and resilience, and burnout and compassion fatigue. Therefore, it is important to implement actions to improve resilience, prevent burnout, and reduce compassion fatigue in mental health nurses. Conclusions: This systematic review showed that mental health nurses experience higher burnout and secondary traumatic stress and lower compassion satisfaction compared to other categories of nurses. QoPL is an important aspect of job satisfaction, and it is necessary to further investigate the QoPL of nurses working in mental health settings, so as to ensure the job satisfaction of nurses in the field of mental health.

Keywords: quality of work life, mental health nurses, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, posttraumatic stress, burnout