Reasons for Psychological Burnout and Low Retention Rates among Nurses: A Systematic Review

 Reasons for Psychological Burnout and Low Retention Rates among Nurses: A Systematic Review

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Reasons for Psychological Burnout and Low Retention Rates among New Graduate Nurses: A Systematic Review

Background

            Burnout occurs in the form of physical, psychological or emotional exhaustion after exposure to stressful working conditions. In nursing, burnout is commonly experienced due to the nature of work done. The findings from the studies listed in Table 1 show that such factors as long working hours, interpersonal relationships, and occupational stress contribute to burnout among the nurses.

Objectives

            The aim of this review is to address the PICO question model, as well as search, identify, gather, review, and critique extant literature on psychological burnout and low retention rates among new graduate nurses.

Methods

            A systematic review was conducted to gather peer-reviewed articles published between 2012 and 2017. The target studies were cross-sectional ones, case-control studies, randomized control studies, trials, and epidemiological studies. A variety of search phrases were used to retrieve appropriate sources from a number of online medical databases. Specifically, such keywords as “nurses,” “burnout,” “graduate nurses,” “psychological burnout,” “causes of burnout among nurses,” “lowered retention rates in nursing,” and “causes of lowered retention rates among nurses” were used. The primary databases used were Google Scholar, PsycINFO, Medline, and Cinahl databases.

Results

Among the retrieved articles, 15 met the inclusion criteria and were used for data extraction. The articles investigated burnout amongst nurses, factors that contribute to burnout, burnout among graduate nurses across the world and low retention rates among nurses across the world.

Conclusions and Implications

Introduction

            Burnout and lower retention rates are huge concerns in the field of nursing. Burnout results from physical, mental, and emotional stress that leads to negative attitude towards illnesses, work and patients, and affects empathy. The long-term effects of burnout amongst nurses is poor healthcare delivery to the patient, reduced motivation, and disengagement. As a matter of fact, patients who are attended by a burnout nurse are unsatisfied with the care given and the hospitals and have higher infection rates, as well as bigger number of poor reviews (Ericksen, 2015). There is a need for continuous research into the primary causes of burnout and lowered retention rates among fresh graduates throughout the world.

Method

            A systematic review of case studies, case-control studies, epidemiological studies, as well as randomized case control and clinical trials published between 2012 and 2017 was done. The PRISMA guidelines were strictly adhered to during the process of selecting relevant articles for inclusion. The articles were retrieved from four primary databases: Google Scholar, PsycINFO, Medline, and Cinahl databases. The search was conducted using a variety of search terms. These keywords included “nurses,” “burnout,” “graduate nurses,” “psychological burnout,” “causes of burnout among nurses,” “lowered retention rates in nursing,” and “causes of lowered retention rates among nurses.” The Boolean phrases “AND” and “OR” were combined with the various keywords to locate the most relevant peer-reviewed articles. After the first hit, the articles were checked for duplicates which were later removed. Afterwards, the titles and abstracts of the articles were reviewed. Then, the full-text articles were reviewed using the formulated inclusion-exclusion criteria. Full-text articles were included in the study if they were peer-reviewed, published between 2012 and 2017, were written in English and if their study design was randomized control study, longitudinal studies, case-control, epidemiological studies or case studies. Articles were excluded if they were not in English, were published before 2012 and if they were reviews, meta-analyses, news articles, and opinionated articles. Also, articles were excluded if they did not investigate the primary reasons for psychological burnout and low retention rates among graduate nurses. After being subjected to the inclusion-exclusion criteria, the articles’ quality was evaluated using the Modified CASP tool. The tool addresses a variety of aspects ranging from ethical statement, suitability of the method applied, number of participants, etc. The flow chart below shows the comprehensive methodology used to select articles for the review.

RESULTS FLOW CHART

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Table 1

Summary of Retrieved Articles

Author/Year/Country

Methodology

Participants/ sample

Data collection Method

Data analysis method

Limitations

Key Findings

Manzano-Garcia &Ayala (2015), Spain

Mixed methods

40 European e