Nurses worldwide unhappy in their job

Dec 11, 2011

Deborah Condon

Deborah Condon





Nurses working in hospitals around the world are dissatisfied with their jobs, with many reporting symptoms of burnout, a new study has shown.

US researchers looked at 100,000 nurses working in nine countries worldwide, including the UK, Germany, the US, New Zealand, Japan and China. The nurses worked in over 1,400 different hospitals.

The study found that between 20 and 60% of nurses reported feeling burned out. Symptoms of work-related burnout can include emotional exhaustion and a reduced ability to work to full capacity.

According to the researchers, in most of the nine countries, over one-third of nurses reported feeling burned out, with this figure rising to almost two-thirds in Japan.

Meanwhile job dissatisfaction ranged from 17% in Germany to 60% in Japan. In most other countries, around one-third of nurses expressed their dissatisfaction.

"Almost half of nurses in all countries, except in Germany, and many more than half of the nurses in a few of the countries, lacked confidence that patients could manage their care after discharge," noted lead researcher, Dr Linda Aiken, of the University of Pennsylvania.

However, the study noted that nurses were less likely to report burnout or job dissatisfaction if they worked in a hospital with a good work environment.

"How well nurses are faring in their jobs has been found to be a barometer of how well patients in those same hospitals are faring. In all countries, more than one in 10 nurses report that care is either fair or poor," Dr Aiken commented.

She and her colleagues make a number of suggestions which they believe could help to improve the situation, including increasing staff, involving nurses in more hospital decisions and improving relations between doctors and nurses.

"Increased attention to improving work environments might be associated with substantial gains in stabilising the global nurse workforce, while also improving quality of hospital care throughout the world," Dr Aiken added.

Details of these findings are published in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care.



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