Quality of care and health professional burnout: narrative literature review
Authors/Creators
- 1. Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
- 2. Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland and PU-RCSI School of Medicine, Perdana University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- 3. Department of Education and Social Policy, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
- 4. Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Description
Healthcare professionals work in environments characterised by constant change. Ageing populations and increased morbidity translate into greater clinical complexity, while pressure to decrease healthcare costs reduce hospital stays, further increasing inpatient acuity. Alongside these developments are demands from the general public in response to well publicised medical scandals and poor conditions in the health service (Collins and Joyce, 2008), for greater quality and rigorous healthcare delivery. Recently, these demands have coincided with government concerns about spiralling healthcare costs (Collins and Joyce,
2008) and calls for greater value for money within the health sector. Cost containment measures, such as staffing reductions, pay freezes and reduced training budgets affect the workforce and have patient-care implications (Buchan and Seccombe, 2012).The focus on healthcare quality in research has arisen in response to mounting evidence that practice, outcomes and costs vary significantly (Berwick, 2009). Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2001) researchers define quality of care (quality for short) as care that is safe, effective, patientcentred,
timely, efficient and equitable. Quality encapsulates the care received by patients,
care delivery by health professionals and also the context within which care is delivered; i.e., conditions prevailing in the workplace (Kingma, 2009). Aiken (Aiken et al., 2008) and (Van Bogaert et al., 2010) highlight the connection between care environments and adverse nurse job outcomes such as burnout and intention to leave.