Background and Objectives: Burnout trends increasing among nurses have contributed to national shortages of healthcare personnel (HCP) in the US. Burnout is an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic unmanaged job stress presenting as feelings of exhaustion, decreased worker efficiency, and reduced self-care practices. Objectives include assessing HCP to identify trends of burnout and positive occupational well-being.
Methods: A framework of evidence-based domains and subdomains was developed using the Total Worker Health® model of worker-well-being, various burnout inventories, and utilizing the health belief model. This framework guided the construction of the Burnout and Occupational Well Being Survey (BOWS), including domains: compassion fatigue, presenteeism, and personal wellness. The BOWS utilizes a 6-point agreement scale and reverse scoring method to produce scores for each subdomain, domain, and a cumulative score, referred to as the BOWS score. BOWS Scores classification uses three categories: positive occupational well-being, burnout trends, and burnout. The BOWS was distributed to all registered nurses and licensed nursing assistants throughout the hospital system.
Results: 199 (34.01%) of the 585 nurses invited to participate responded, and 196 nurses (33.5%) consented to participate. The mean BOWS score (2.94,n=196) indicated positive occupational well-being of nursing staff. Mean compassion fatigue and personal wellness showed burnout trends (CF:3.03;PW:3.1,n=196). Univariate analyses conducted between departments indicated the highest burnout rate among emergency medicine nurses (3.64,n=13) and burnout trends in the intensive care unit (3.17,n=10) and medical-surgical nursing staff (3.18,n=40). Regression analyses revealed that participant BOWS, compassion fatigue, and personal wellness scores statistically significantly predicted participants' perceived experience of burnout (F(3,192)=130.466, p<0.001, R2=0.671, n=196).
Conclusions: The first step of addressing HCP burnout is conducting the assessment. Post-assessment, hospital HCP are not experiencing burnout hospital-wide. Departments exhibiting burnout trends that would benefit from targeted intervention were identified. Healthcare organizations recognize burnout's detrimental impact and want to support HCP however possible.
