Longer Shifts for Nurses Lead to Burnout & Patient Dissatisfaction

A new study published in Health Affairs has found that longer shifts for nurses not only cause job dissatisfaction, but also make patients more likely to be unhappy with the care they have received from nurses.

A team from the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated that nurses working 10 hour shifts (or longer) were up to 2.5 times more likely than nurses with shorter shifts to experience job dissatisfaction and burnout.

Click here to read about the study on Nurse.com.
Click here to access the abstract on the Health Affairs website.

New Study Examines Link Between Nurse Burnout and Care

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (INQRI's home) examined the relationship between nurse-burnout and potential harm to patients. The study, which was published on Monday in the American Journal of Infection Control, utilized 2006 infection data linked with two separate surveys examining hospital work environments and nurse burnout. The research team found that by adding a single patient to a nurse's workload, there was an increase of nearly one infection per 1,000 patient. Additionally, the authors also found that a 10 percent increase in a hospital's proportion of burned-out nurses raised urinary tract infections about the same amount but surgical site infections more than 50 percent, from 4.2 per 1,000 patients to more than six.

To read more about the study, click here.

To read the research article, click here (subscription required).

Burnout In ICU Could Be Decreased By More Female Nurses

Yesterday, Grace Rattue, of medicalnewstoday.com, detailed the findings of a study conducted by Swiss researchers and published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine that sought to establish a correlation between higher female nurse staffing ratios and decreased employee burnout. With over 3,000 people in 72 Swiss ICUs evaluated, the study found that not only were higher ratio of female nurses associated with a reduced overall risk of burnout, but female caregivers were also more likely to say they experienced stress.

Click here to read the full article.

Click here for a direct link to the journal article.