The incidence of burnout among critical care nurses: a short cross-sectional study

introduction: Contemporary nursing is considered one of the most stressful jobs requiring a simultaneous mental, physical and emotional engagement. As expected, the exposure of nurses to occupational stressors is most significant in critical care units. Nowadays, critical care units have been recognized as one of the most stressful working environment in global human professional activity, particularly for nurses, who are in a close contact with hospitalized patients throughout all of their working hours.
aim: To assess the incidence of professional burnout among critical care nurses, by using the inventory based on Freudenberger Burnout Scale. methods: This research was designed as a mini cross-sectional psychometric study in September 2017.
The study included 71 nurses employed in critical care units of surgery, urology, internal medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, obstetrics, and otorhinolaryngology departments in one of five university hospital centers in Belgrade, Serbia. results: The statistical analysis of the data obtained in this study showed alarming results - burnout syndrome affected approximately one-third of the observed subjects, in form of manifested or severe job burnout. In the same time, another one-third of subjects were classified in the category of burnout candidates. Conclusion: Burnout involvement in observed sample exceeds the mean frequency of job burnout among
critical care nurses in other European countries that have been reported in the available literature sources.