Feature Prevalence of Burnout Syndrome in Emergency Nurses A Meta Analysis Jose Luis G mez Urquiza PhD Emilia I De la Fuente Solana PhD Luis Albend n Garc a RN PhD Cristina Vargas Pecino PhD Elena M Ortega Campos PhD Guillermo A Ca adas De la Fuente MD PhD Objective To determine the prevalence of burnout based on the Maslach Burnout Inventory on the 3 dimensions of high Emotional Exhaustion high Depersonalization and low Personal Accomplishment among emergency nurses Method A search of the terms emergency AND nurs AND burnout was conducted using the following databases CINAHL Cochrane CUIDEN IBECS LILACS PubMed ProQuest PsycINFO SciELO and Scopus Results Thirteen studies were included for the Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales of Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization and 11 studies for the subscale of low Personal Accomplishment The total sample of nurses was 1566 The estimated prevalence of each subscale was 31 95 CI 20 44 for Emotional Exhaustion 36 95 CI 23 51 for Depersonalization and 29 95 CI 15 44 for low Personal Accomplishment Conclusions The prevalence of burnout syndrome in emergency nurses is high about 30 of the sample was affected with at least 1 of the 3 Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales Working conditions and personal factors should be taken into account when assessing burnout risk pro les of emergency nurses Critical Care Nurse 2017 37 5 e1 e9 Burnout syndrome is one of the most important occupational health problems in various pro fessions that involve working with other people 1 Among susceptible occupations health care professionals have been identi ed as the group most likely to experience burnout Burnout has been studied extensively 1 with Freudenberger2 initiating the study of this syndrome in social services pro fessionals Nevertheless Maslach and Jackson s3 de nition of a 3 dimensional psychological syndrome in which an individual who provides human services has Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization in client attention and feelings of low Personal Accomplishment is currently the most accepted and widespread de nition The Maslach Burnout Inventory MBI categorizes the intensity of burnout into a low medium or high level for each dimension or subscale Burnout scores are higher when Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization subscale scores are higher and Personal Accomplishment scores are lower 3 2017 American Association of Critical Care Nurses doi https doi org 10 4037 ccn2017508 www ccnonline org CriticalCareNurse Vol 37 No 5 OCTOBER 2017 e1 In health care nurses have one of the highest rates of burnout 4 This syndrome in uences different aspects of nursing health care A professional with burnout may present with physical weakness insomnia hostility irri tability and depression 5 Patients of the individual with burnout are also affected because of a decrease in the quality of nursing care 6 7 Finally health institutions face burnout related problems such as increased absenteeism job rotation and reduced work performance 8 9 Through educational interventions mediation or interventions focused on affected individuals treatment of burnout among nurses has been studied although results have been limited 10 12 Among nursing professionals emergency nurses have an increased risk of experi encing burnout In the last decade numerous burnout risk factors have been studied among nursing professionals such as work experience 13 job satisfaction 14 personality and sociodemographic factors 4 Another important risk fac tor that has been assessed in recent studies15 16 is the hos pital unit or spe cialty in which nurses work Each specialty cares for patients with certain dis eases and morbidities so the daily work of nursing can vary substantially depending on the speci c unit The importance of determining how the specialty in uences the development of burnout has been re ected in descrip tive studies comparing burnout among different spe cialties such as internal medicine palliative care and hematology 17 or in systematic reviews about burnout in speci c units such as oncology 18 critical care 19 and emer gency departments EDs 15 16 On a daily basis nurses working in the ED deal with unexpected situations and patients who may be at risk of death because of their pathologies 20 This indirect expo sure to trauma may generate secondary traumatic stress in emergency nurses 20 In addition EDs have been iden ti ed as one of the medical specialty units where attacks and assaults by patients on health care professionals are most frequent 21 These factors suggest that among nurs ing professionals emergency nurses have an increased risk of experiencing burnout Reviews about burnout among emergency nurses indicate a high prevalence of the syndrome15 however burnout prevalence rates vary considerably among included studies For example reported Emotional Exhaustion prevalence rates range from 9 5 22 to 67 23 In previous research 15 prevalence rates of and risk factors for burnout were identi ed in emergency nurses however a meta analysis of these prevalence rates was not done A meta analytic study could provide an estimate of the prevalence of burnout among emergency nurses as has been already done for example in oncology professionals 24 The aim of this study was to determine the preva lence of burnout syndrome in emergency nurses using the MBI manual which established higher rates of burn out when Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization subscale scores are higher and Personal Accomplish ment scores are lower 3 The question that guided the meta analysis was What are the prevalence rates of high Emotional Exhaustion high Depersonalization and low Personal Accomplishment in emergency nurses Authors Methods Jose Luis G mez Urquiza is a nursing lecturer and Guillermo A Ca adas De la Fuente is an assistant professor in the Nursing Department and Emilia I De la Fuente Solana is a professor and Elena M Ortega Campos is a lecturer in the Methodology of the Behavioural Science Department University of Granada Ceuta Spain Luis Albend n Garc a is an emergency and critical care nurse at the Andalusian Health Service Andalusia Spain Cristina Vargas Pecino is an assistant professor in the Psychology Department University of Valencia Valencia Spain Corresponding author Jose L G mez Urquiza PhD Nursing Department University of Granada Campus Universitario de Ceuta C Cortadura del Valle S N 51001 Ceuta Spain email jlgurquiza ugr es To purchase electronic or print reprints contact the