Predictors of burnout among HIV nurses in the Western Cape.

Rizwana Roomaney,Ashraf Kagee,Jeanette Steenkamp

doi:10.4102/curationis.v40i1.1695

Abstract

BackgroundBurnout has been implicated as one of the reasons for key healthcare personnel, such as nurses, leaving their profession, resulting in insufficient staff to attend to patients.ObjectiveWe investigated the predictors of three dimensions of burnout, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment, among nurses in South Africa attending to patients living with HIV.MethodParticipants were recruited at a large tertiary hospital in the Western Cape region, with the help of the assistant director of nursing at the hospital. They completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Quantitative Workload Inventory, the Interpersonal Conflict at Work Scale, the Organisational Constraints Scale, the Death and Dying subscale of the Nursing Stress Scale, and the HIV and AIDS Stigma Instrument – Nurse.ResultsWe found elevated levels of burnout among the sample. Workload, job status and interpersonal conflict at work significantly explained more than one-third of the variance in emotional exhaustion (R² = 0.39, F(7, 102) = 9.28, p = 0.001). Interpersonal conflict, workload, organisational constraints and HIV stigma significantly explained depersonalisation (R² = 0.33, F(7, 102) = 7.22, p = 0.001). Job status and organisational constraints significantly predicted personal accomplishment (R² = 0.18, F(7, 102) = 3.12, p = 0.001).ConclusionFactors such as workload, job status and interpersonal conflict in the work context, organisational constraints and stigma associated with HIV were found to be predictors of burnout in the sample of nurses. Our recommendations include developing and testing interventions aimed at reducing burnout among nurses, including reducing workload and creating conditions for less interpersonal conflict at work.

Highlights

Problem statementBurnout has been implicated as one of the reasons for key healthcare personnel such as nurses leaving their profession, resulting in insufficient staff to attend to patients (Aiken et al 2002)
Research objective In the context of the challenging terrain of HIV treatment, we investigated the predictors of three dimensions of burnout, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment among a sample of South African nurses caring for patients living with HIV
We found that burnout was elevated among the sample

Summary

Introduction

Burnout has been implicated as one of the reasons for key healthcare personnel such as nurses leaving their profession, resulting in insufficient staff to attend to patients (Aiken et al 2002). Nurses in the South African public healthcare system face a range of challenges that create conditions under which burnout occurs. These conditions include being overworked, having to deal with a large number of patients in a short period of time, poor hospital facilities and infrastructure and non-competitive remuneration (Bester & Engelbrecht 2009; Rispel & Bruce 2014). Burnout has been implicated as one of the reasons for key healthcare personnel, such as nurses, leaving their profession, resulting in insufficient staff to attend to patients

Results

Discussion

Conclusion