Nurse burnout impacts patient safety, health care quality, and patient satisfaction, according to a new study.
Health care professionals across the country are struggling with burnout syndrome, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impacts are extensive. According to a new study published by JAMA Network Open, nurse burnout is linked to lower patient safety, lower patient satisfaction, and a lower quality of care.
For the analysis, researchers from Harvard and Stanford University reviewed 85 studies, which included 288,582 nurses from 32 countries
RELATED: Survey finds heavy prevalence of racism in nursing
“Nurses are on the front line of patient care in hospitals and other settings, often present when physicians are not, and charged with making important clinical decisions,” wrote researchers. “Because of the critical role of nurses in delivering and, in some cases, overseeing patient care, nurse burnout may be associated with many dimensions of patient outcomes.”
The findings show nurse burnout, which the researchers explained as being characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment, has concerning associations with several patient safety outcomes.
RELATED: SDoH in the news: Survey shows spike in workplace violence among nurses
Key findings include:
- Patient safety outcomes
Nurse burnout is associated with a lower safety climate or safety culture, a lower safety grade, more frequent hospital-acquired infections, more patient falls, more frequent medication errors, more incidences of medical errors, more frequent safety incidents, and more incidences of missed care.
- Patient satisfaction scores
The study found nurse burnout is linked to lower patient satisfaction ratings.
- Quality of care outcomes
Nurse burnout was also associated with poor quality of care, a higher rate of tube feeding in nursing home patients, and a higher rate of urinary catheter use in nursing home patients.
While these associations were consistent across nurses’ age, sex, work experience, and geography, the researchers did find the link with patient safety outcomes and nurse burnout was smaller among nurses with higher levels of education, which the researchers said underscores the importance in investing in nursing education and training.
“Allocation of even more substantive funding, commensurate with the magnitude and adverse effects of health worker burnout, seems necessary to support research and implementation of evidence-based approaches to reduce clinician burnout,” wrote the researchers.