Nurses’ reported burnout and its relationship to patients’ length of stay in Magnet hospitals

Abstract

Background: The health system nationally and internationally, due to the recent advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, has faced a multitude of difficulties in its functioning. The pandemic posed a serious threat to human health, causing rapid changes to the health systems and the health professionals, such as nursing staff, who were called upon to make every effort to respond to the difficulties by working intensively long hours. In these unprecedented circumstances, staff burnout has swelled and may pose a threat to patient safety. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of nurses’ burnout and workload in predicting covid-19 patients’ length of stay. Method: A total of 160 nurses of a General Hospital participated in the survey and 160 records were kept of 22 patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Covid-19. The Maslach questionnaire (Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)) was used as a study tool to measure burnout, the Nursing Activity Score (NAS) for nursing workload and the duration of hospitalization for Covid-19 patients were taken from hospital records. Multiple regression analysis was performed with the stepwise selection method, in order to be able to determine the factors that affect the patients’ length of stay. Results: Nurses’ burnout in ICU Covid-19 was found to be high as well as their workload. However, only the nursing workload (β =, 452 t = 2,124, p = 0,35) was associated with a longer patients’ length of stay in the ICU (F (1,158) = 4,512, p <, 001) and not the dimensions of burnout. Conclusions: The current pandemic pointed out the existing gaps in the health system. Nurses are unable to influence the uncontrollable course of Covid-19 disease, which has hampered their daily work and mental health and their workload has an impact on patient safety.