NURSES’ EXPERIENCE OF BURNOUT SYNDROME WHILE WORKING IN ONCOLOGY DEPARTMENTS

Abstract

When experiencing burnout, the emotional and physical health of nurses deteriorates, the quality of work decrea­ses, and patient dissatisfaction increases. Nurses working in oncology units, due to the nature of their specialty, face those with a cancer diagnosis, which causes a lot of fear and uncertainty. The aim of the study is to reveal the burnout experienced by nurses working in oncology departments. The Copenhagen Burnout Questionnaire was used to implement the quantitative study. The results of the study revealed that nurses working in oncology departments had the strongest personal and work-rela­ted burnout. The most common factors leading to bur­nout were lack of feedback from patients and decreased energy. The relationships between demographic indica­tors and burnout components were used to analyze the research results. Methodology. Analysis of scientific literature; question­naire; descriptive analysis of research data using IBM SPSS 22.0 computer program statistics package and MS Excel 2021 computer program. After analyzing the scien­tific literature, a descriptive quantitative research met­hod was chosen for the research. A questionnaire survey aimed at analyzing the burnout experienced by nurses working in oncology departments. The research was con­ducted in October-November 2023, the respondents were nurses working in the city of Klaipeda (Lithuania). Re­search object: burnout experienced by nurses working in oncology departments. The questionnaire survey was created on the website online. The survey instrument consists of demographic indicators and the “Copenhagen Burnout Questionnaire”. The sample consisted of 143 respondents. Selection criteria: age, seniority, education, marital status, distribution of working time, workload and workplace. Respondents were selected by convenient non-probability sampling, respondents could choose the right place and time when answering questionnaire qu­estions, because the survey was conducted online, and the duration of the survey was not limited. Conclusions. after examining the manifestation of bur­nout syndrome, it became clear that nurses with personal burnout usually experience frequent fatigue and emotio­nal exhaustion. Burnout caused by work was most stron­gly related to emotionally exhausting work and fatigue at the end of the working day, and burnout caused by work with patients was most strongly determined by decrea­sed energy due to work with patients, lack of feedback from patients. The least burnout caused by working with patients was caused by irritation while working with pa­tients and difficult work with patients.