Burnout and Psychological Capital in Rural Critical Access Hospital Nurses
This study focuses on how psychological capital, socio-demographic and organizational work-related factors are associated with burnout in this population. This cross-sectional, descriptive correlational study employed the Maslach Burnout Inventory for Health Professionals, the Psychological Capital Questionnaire, and a sociodemographic questionnaire assessing individual and organizational work-related factors as self-report tools. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression analyses were performed to assess aspects of the nurses’ work environment, while describing the relationships among the variables.Means and standard deviations were examined across key variables and compared to reports from other studies. Hypotheses predicted psychological capital would be associated with burnout (negatively associated with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, positively associated with personal accomplishment), and that individual sociodemographic and organizational work-related factors would also be associated with BO. It was further hypothesized that PsyCap would moderate the relationship between work-related factors and BO.
Maslach Burnout Inventory results reveal similar findings to those in the global sample. However, levels of emotional exhaustion and professional accomplishment were greater in our rural nurse sample compared to published values. Higher levels of psychological capital were found to be related to decreases in depersonalization and correlated to greater professional accomplishment. Psychological capital was not found to moderate associations within this study. Intent to stay more than one year had a strong, negative correlation with emotional exhaustion. The findings suggest burnout in this sample resembles that of the global problem and sets a baseline from which psychological capital trainings may be built.
- Author (aut): McCay, Rebecca
- Thesis advisor (ths): Larkey, Linda K
- Committee member: Kelly, Lesly
- Committee member: Todd, Michael
- Publisher (pbl): Arizona State University