OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of burnout (based on the Maslach Burnout Inventory on the 3 dimensions of high Emotional Exhaustion, high Depersonalization, and low Personal Accomplishment) among emergency nurses. METHOD A search of the terms “emergency AND nurs* AND burnout” was conducted using the following databases: CINAHL, Cochrane, CUIDEN, IBECS, LILACS, PubMed, ProQuest, PsycINFO, SciELO, and Scopus. RESULTS Thirteen studies were included for the Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales of Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization and 11 studies for the subscale of low Personal Accomplishment. The total sample of nurses was 1566. The estimated prevalence of each subscale was 31% (95% CI, 20–44) for Emotional Exhaustion, 36% (95% CI, 23–51) for Depersonalization, and 29% (95% CI, 15–44) for low Personal Accomplishment. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of burnout syndrome in emergency nurses is high; about 30% of the sample was affected with at least 1 of the 3 Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales. Working conditions and personal factors should be taken into account when assessing burnout risk profiles of emergency nurses.

The correlation between the burnout syndrome and sociodemographic variables in nursing professionals has been widely studied though research results are contradictory. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of gender, marital status, and children on the dimensions of the burnout syndrome (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment) in nursing professionals, as measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The search was performed in May 2018 in the next databases: CINAHL, CUIDEN, Dialnet, Psicodoc, ProQuest Platform, OVID Platform, and Scopus with the search equation (“Maslach Burnout Inventory” OR “MBI”) AND “nurs*”, without using any search restriction. The sample was n = 78 studies: 57 studies for gender; 32 for marital status; 13 for having children. A statistically significant relation between depersonalization and gender (r = 0.078), marital status (r = 0.047), and children (r = 0.053) was found. A significant relation was also found between emotional exhaustion and children (r = 0.048). The results showed that being male, being single or divorced, and not having children were related to the highest levels of burnout in nurses. Moreover, these relations could be accentuated by the influence of moderator variables (age, seniority, job satisfaction, etc.), which, in combination with the previously mentioned significant relations, should be evaluated in the design burnout risk profiles for nursing professionals.

Numerous empirical studies have suggested a link between occupational factors and the burnout syndrome. The effect sizes of the association reported vary widely in nursing professionals. The objective of this research was to assess the influence of five occupational factors (job seniority, professional experience, job satisfaction, specialization and work shift) on the three burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment) in nursing. We conducted a meta-analysis with a total of 81 studies met to our inclusion criteria: 31 on job seniority; 29 on professional experience; 37 on job satisfaction; 4 on specialization; and 6 on work shift. The mean effect sizes found suggest that job satisfaction and, to a lesser extent, specialization were important factors influencing the burnout syndrome. The heterogeneity analysis showed that there was a great variability in all the estimates of the mean effect size. Various moderators were found to be significant in explaining the association between occupational factors and burnout. In conclusion, it is important to prevent the substantive moderators that are influencing these associations. The improved methodological variables explain most of the contradictory results found in previous research on this field