Professional exhaustion, quality and intentions among family health nurses

to analyze how family health nurses assess quality of care; check if they have any intention of leaving their current job and nursing; estimate prevalence of professional exhaustion; and correlate these variables.

Method:

cross-sectional and correlational study with 198 nurses. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was applied, as it has questions for characterizing nurses, assessing perception on quality of care and of material and human resources, and verifying intention of leaving current work and nursing.

Results:

most nurses assess quality of care as good, 28.0% present emotional exhaustion, there is intention of leaving current work and nursing.

Conclusions:

family health nurses experience professional exhaustion, which in turn presents correlation with decreased quality of care and increased intentions of leaving current work and nursing.

Descriptors:
Quality of Health Care; Intention; Burnout, Professional; Nursing; Occupational Health Services

Variable	n^* * number of nurses;	%
Sex
Female	175	88.38
Male	23	11.62
Marital status
Single	90	45.45
Married	84	42.42
Divorced or widowed	21	10.61
No information	3	1.52
Specialization Graduate Course
Public Health	117	59.10
Other fields	39	19.70
Does not have	41	20.70
No information	1	0.50
Graduated more than once
Yes	17	8.59
No	181	91.41
Employment Relationship
Under Public Workers’ Statue	191	96.46
Under CLT^† † Consolidation of Labor Laws. Regime	3	1.52
No information	4	2.02
Has another employment relationship
Yes	19	9.60
No	177	89.39
No information	2	1.01
Work shift
Morning, afternoon or night	109	55.05
Mixed	83	41.92
No information	6	3.03

Variable	n^* * number of nurses.	%
Perception of quality of care
Very bad	1	0.50
Bad	26	13.13
Good	154	77.78
Very good	14	7.07
No information	3	1.52
Adequate number of professionals
Yes	34	17.17
No	162	81.82
No information	2	1.01
Adequate resources
Yes	10	5.05
No	187	94.44
No information	1	0.51

Variable	n^* * number of nurses analyzed.	Mean	Standard Deviation	Minimum	Median	Maximum
Time since graduated (years)	165	10.61	9.11	2.00	6.00	35.00
Weekly working hours	191	38.27	7.97	30.00	36.00	88.00
Intention of leaving current job (mm)	186	28.40	33.30	0.00	10.50	100.00
Intention of leaving nursing (mm)	190	14.90	27.00	0.00	0.00	100.00

Maslach Burnout Inventory subscale	Low	Moderate	High
Emotional exhaustion	≤22	23-27	≥28
Depersonalization	≤7	8-10	≥11
Personal accomplishment	≤29	30-32	≥33

Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales	Quality of care (n^* * number of nurses analyzed; =165)	Intention of leaving current job (n^* * number of nurses analyzed; =162)	Intention of leaving nursing (n^* * number of nurses analyzed; =164)
Emotional exhaustion	0.13	0.34^† † p-value<0.05;	0.28^† † p-value<0.05;
Depersonalization	0.23^† † p-value<0.05;	0.11	0.10
Personal accomplishment	0.32^† † p-value<0.05;	0.17^‡ ‡ p-value<0.01	0.12

Associação Brasileira de Enfermagem SGA Norte Quadra 603 Conj. "B" - Av. L2 Norte 70830-102 Brasília, DF, Brasil, Tel.: (55 61) 3226-0653, Fax: (55 61) 3225-4473 - Brasília - DF - Brazil
E-mail: reben@abennacional.org.br

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[1] CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Vera Regina Lorenz E-mail: vrlorenz@gmail.com