A multicentre study of psychological variables and the prevalence of burnout among primary health care nurses

Abstract

Nurses in primary health care (PHC) have multiple responsibilities but must often work with limited resources. The study’s aim was to estimate burnout levels among PHC nurses. A Quantitative, observational, cross-sectional, multicentre study of 338 nurses working in PHC in the Andalusian Public Health Service (Spain) is presented. A total of 40.24% of the nurses studied had high levels of burnout. The dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation were significantly associated with anxiety, depression, neuroticism, on-call duty and seniority-profession and inversely related to agreeableness. In addition, depersonalisation was significantly associated with gender, and emotional exhaustion correlated inversely with age. Personal achievement was inversely associated with anxiety and depression and positively correlated with agreeableness, extraversion and responsibility. There is a high prevalence of burnout among nurses in PHC. Those most likely to suffer burnout syndrome are relatively young, suffer from anxiety and depression and present high scores for neuroticism and low ones for agreeableness, responsibility and extraversion.