As health care workers face a wide range of psychosocial stressors, they are at a high risk of developing burnout syndrome, which in turn may affect hospital outcomes such as the quality and safety of provided care. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the moderating effect of job control on the relationship between workload and burnout. A total of 352 hospital workers from five Italian public hospitals completed a self-administered questionnaire that was used to measure exhaustion, cynicism, job control, and workload. Data were collected in 2013. In contrast to previous studies, the results of this study supported the moderation effect of job control on the relationship between workload and exhaustion. Furthermore, the results found support for the sequential link from exhaustion to cynicism. This study showed the importance for hospital managers to carry out management practices that promote job control and provide employees with job resources, in order to reduce the burnout risk.
Burnout has a long tradition of studies in the workplace and recently researchers suggested burnout is also rising among university students. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is considered a valid measure of burnout. However, the student version of the MBI (MBI-SS) has received limited empirical support. The aim of this paper is to analyze the factorial validity, invariance, and latent profiles of the Italian version of the MBI-SS in a sample university students. A total of 7757 Italian university students participated in an online cross-sectional survey. Results from explorative and confirmatory factor analyses showed acceptable fits for the Italian version of the MBI-SS. In addition, multigroup analyses supported full-metric invariance of MBI-SS within gender and academic level (bachelor vs. master). Finally, results from latent profile analysis showed that a three latent profile model was the better solution for the data: (a) burned-out (high levels of exhaustion, cynicism (CY), and low professional efficacy (PE); n = 2665, 34.2%); (b) overextended (high levels of exhaustion, moderate other, n = 3953, 51.0%); and (c) engaged (moderate exhaustion, low CY, and high PE, n = 1149, 14.8%). The resulting three-profile solution in the present study partially agrees with a prior study as it replicated three of the five-profile solution identified. In sum, we suggest that the MBI-SS is valid and reliable and represents a robust instrument for the measurement of burnout among Italian speaking university students.