Nurses are known for working their infamous 12-hour shifts. Although having 4 days off every week may sound appealing, working these extended hours can truly have an impact on one’s health. Nurses are constantly being faced with stressful situations for long periods of time. When they exceed their coping capacity, it is likely that they will develop work burnout. Burnout is a three-dimensional phenomenon that is composed of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and a decreased sense of personal accomplishment at work (PA). We believe it is necessary that further research be conducted to analyze the association between nurse burnout and working long shifts. In order to properly address our desired area of study, we developed the research question, “Are nurses that work 12-hour shifts at a higher risk of developing nursing burnout compared to nurses that work 8-hour shifts?” This is relevant to the nursing field because among medical caregivers, those involved in nursing most often suffer even higher levels of burnout because they have higher exposure to patients and work these longer shifts. In hopes of answering our research question, we conducted a detailed search on a variety of reliable databases; we used proper inclusion and exclusion criteria to obtain appropriate articles. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used to assess the levels of burnout among nurses; a score of 27 or more is indicative of burnout. Based on our research, it was concluded that the average score on the MBI was a 27. There is current evidence that working extended shifts may affect the safety of nurses and patients. However, surveys suggested that nurses are more likely to continue working these longer shifts due to the perceived benefits. Due to the various risks that nursing burnout can have on an individual, more physical and mental health resources should be provided for nursing staff and the stigma around taking days off/vacation time should be left in the past. This research experience is relevant to our future careers because we are currently in nursing school. Experiencing levels of work burnout is something that could be in our foreseeable future. Therefore, we wanted to gain a higher level of knowledge in relation to this topic so that we could understand what events lead to the development of BO, the ways in which it may affect us, and how it could potentially be prevented.
Authors: Arianna Pignatiello, Maham Qureshi, Sophia Griffiths, Brooke Lilly, Madison Barker
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Eyad Musallam, Department of Nursing
You must be logged in to post a comment.