Burnout in mental health nurses: much ado about nothing?

The syndrome of burnout has been the focus of much research in the caring professions. Maslach and Jackson operationally defined the syndrome as comprising high levels of emotional exhaustion, high depersonalization and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment. They argued that the syndrome could be reliably measured using the 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory. The present authors gave this scale to 648 ward-based mental health nurses along with a range of other standardized scales. The total sample was then divided into a high burnout group (high scores on all three subscales, N=37 or 5.7 percent) and a low burnout group (low scores on all subscales, N=66 or 10.2 percent). The findings show that burnout is a much less significant problem for mental health nurses than other researchers have indicated. There was, however, clear evidence for the construct validity of the burnout concept. Future directions for burnout research with mental health nurses are outlined. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.