Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Oct;23(10):806-13.
doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2014-002831. Epub 2014 Apr 17.

Burnout in the NICU setting and its relation to safety culture

Jochen Profit  1 , Paul J Sharek  2 , Amber B Amspoker  3 , Mark A Kowalkowski  4 , Courtney C Nisbet  5 , Eric J Thomas  6 , Whitney A Chadwick  7 , J Bryan Sexton  8
Affiliations

Burnout in the NICU setting and its relation to safety culture

Jochen Profit et al. BMJ Qual Saf. 2014 Oct.

Abstract

Background: Burnout is widespread among healthcare providers and is associated with adverse safety behaviours, operational and clinical outcomes. Little is known with regard to the explanatory links between burnout and these adverse outcomes.

Objectives: (1) Test the psychometric properties of a brief four-item burnout scale, (2) Provide neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) burnout and resilience benchmarking data across different units and caregiver types, (3) Examine the relationships between caregiver burnout and patient safety culture.

Research design: Cross-sectional survey study.

Subjects: Nurses, nurse practitioners, respiratory care providers and physicians in 44 NICUs.

Measures: Caregiver assessments of burnout and safety culture.

Results: Of 3294 administered surveys, 2073 were returned for an overall response rate of 62.9%. The percentage of respondents in each NICU reporting burnout ranged from 7.5% to 54.4% (mean=25.9%, SD=10.8). The four-item burnout scale was reliable (α=0.85) and appropriate for aggregation (intra-class correlation coefficient-2=0.95). Burnout varied significantly between NICUs, p<0.0001, but was less prevalent in physicians (mean=15.1%, SD=19.6) compared with non-physicians (mean=26.9%, SD=11.4, p=0.0004). NICUs with more burnout had lower teamwork climate (r=-0.48, p=0.001), safety climate (r=-0.40, p=0.01), job satisfaction (r=-0.64, p<0.0001), perceptions of management (r=-0.50, p=0.0006) and working conditions (r=-0.45, p=0.002).

Conclusions: NICU caregiver burnout appears to have 'climate-like' features, is prevalent, and associated with lower perceptions of patient safety culture.

Keywords: Health services research; Healthcare quality improvement; Safety culture.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Burnout and resilience in 44 NICUs. Per cent burnout is the per cent responding in the ‘neutral to agree strongly’ range across the burnout items; per cent resilient is the per cent responding in the ‘disagree strongly’ range.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Cherniss C. Staff Burnout: Job Stress in the Human Services. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications; 1980.
    1. Maslach C, Schaufeli WB, Leiter MP. Job burnout. Annu Rev Psychol. 2001;52:397–422. - PubMed
    1. Lindblom KM, Linton SJ, Fedeli C, et al. Burnout in the working population: relations to psychosocial work factors. Int J Behav Med. 2006;13:51–59. - PubMed
    1. Maslach C, Jackson S. The measurement of experienced burnout. J Occup Behav. 1981;2:99–113.
    1. Meeusen VC, Van DK, Brown-Mahoney C, et al. Understanding nurse anesthetists’ intention to leave their job: how burnout and job satisfaction mediate the impact of personality and workplace characteristics. Health Care Manage Rev. 2011;36:155–163. - PubMed

Publication types