Relationships between workload perception, burnout, and intent to leave among medical-surgical nurses.

Aim: These are turbulent times for hospitals, patients, and nurses. Nurse turnover is a global issue across all specialties but are exacerbated in medical-surgical areas where high nurse-patient ratios, use of point-of-care technologies, and stressful working conditions require sufficient numbers of highly trained nurses. These workload factors are further exaggerated by the current nursing shortage. The current nursing shortage crisis makes nursing job conditions more important than ever to examine. Despite heavy emphasis on promoting healthy work environments, job satisfaction, and retention of nurses working in intensive care and emergency room settings, limited research is available about the workload perception, burnout, and intent to leave among medical-surgical nurses. This study aimed to describe the relationships between workload perception, burnout, and intent to leave among medical-surgical nurses at two teaching hospitals in Southeastern United States.

Methods: A survey design and convenience sampling method was used. A sample of 58 medical-surgical staff nurses participated in the study. A 42-item questionnaire composed of a demographic survey, Individual Workload Perception Scale, and Maslach Burnout Inventory Scale were used. Simple descriptive statistics, Pearson's product-moment correlations, and multiple regression analysis procedures were used to analyze the data.

Results: More than half of the respondents reported high workloads and intentions to leave their current position. The overall burnout level for the sample was moderate to high. Moderate-to-strong intercorrelations were found between workload perception and intent to leave (r = 0.513, P < 0.0001), burnout and intent to leave (r = -0.435, P < 0.0006), and workload perception and burnout (r = -0.588, P < 0.0001). Workload perception and burnout among medical-surgical nurses both factored significantly on the intent to leave a current job (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: The current study provides new insights about the relationships between workload perception, burnout, and intent to leave among medical-surgical nurses. The findings indicate the higher the nurses' workload perception, the more likely they will leave their current job. Nurse managers should consider these findings when developing strategies to improve the work environment and nurse retention. Additional research is needed to gain more insight into the causality among workload perception, burnout, and intent to leave a current job among medical-surgical nurses.