Background: 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.
Methods: 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.
Results: 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.
Conclusion: 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.
Keywords: burnout; cynicism; exhaustion; job control; workload.