Aims: The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between a hospital's social capital, individual decision latitude, workload and emotional exhaustion in nurses, controlling for age, sex, years of professional experience and job tenure.
Background: In western countries between 15-45% of nurses working in hospitals suffer from burnout, characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and decreased personal performance. The prevention of burnout constitutes a great challenge to those responsible for the health care system, not least because burnout may cause increasing turnover rates in nurses and lead to medical mistakes.
Design: Survey.
Method: A questionnaire was mailed to 1325 nurses working at four hospitals in east and west Germany in 2002. Nine hundred and fifty nine nurses responded (response rate: 72.4%).
Results: Logistic regression identified three significant predictors of emotional exhaustion in nurses: workload (OR: 4.523, CI: 3.230-6.333) was positively associated with emotional exhaustion. Decision latitude (OR: 0.376, CI: 0.254-0.557) and social capital in the hospitals (OR: 0.549, CI: 0.403-0.746) were negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion was not affected by age, sex, years of professional experience and job tenure. Nagelkerke's Pseudo R(2) was 0.225.
Conclusions: The findings underline the importance of social capital and organisational development in hospital management.
Relevance to clinical practice: Efforts to create a good working atmosphere with readiness to provide mutual support and the pursuit of joint values in a hospital, the reduction of workload and increased decision latitude may prevent the development of emotional exhaustion in nurses.