Nikita Rodrigues1, Lindsey Cohen1
1) United States
Background and Aims: Nurses are at high risk for job burnout, which can lead to psychological and physical problems, decreased quality of patient care, and premature exit from the profession. The current study examined a model of burnout in nurses working in pediatric chronic abdominal pain.
Methods: A model of nurse burnout including four predictors (time on unit, negative chronic pain beliefs, perceived barriers to optimal pain management, moral distress) and four moderators (self-efficacy, empathy, negative pain beliefs, social support) was analyzed using a quantitative battery completed by 42 nurses working with pediatric chronic abdominal pain patients.
Results: Correlational analyses revealed that higher self-efficacy (r = -.44, p < .01) and more time on the unit (r = -.34, p < .05) were associated with lower reports of burnout. Additionally, greater reports of moral distress (r = .32, p < .05) and negative views of the hospital environment (r = .46, p < .01) were associated with higher reports of burnout. Analyses revealed no significant associations between burnout and any of the other variables studied, though the relationships between perceived pain management barriers (r = .26, p = .09), negative beliefs about chronic pain (r = .27, p = .09), empathy (r = -.29, p = .07) and burnout approached significance despite the small sample size.
Conclusions: Quantitative findings provided preliminary support for the nurse burnout model, and highlighted some potential areas for intervention. Additionally, these results suggested that nurses who work with chronic pain patients might have unique stressors (e.g., moral distress, beliefs about chronic pain) that contribute to burnout. This model provides a framework for evaluating the critical issues of burnout in nurses working with pediatric patients with chronic pain.
