Wednesday, July 8th 2026
How serious can nurse fatigue be for the health of patients and what happens when this fatigue turns into professional burnout?
Results in health care are significantly affected by quality, but fortunately they are not necessarily related to increased mortality, despite the fact that some parts of care are often not carried out…
The syndrome of professional exhaustion (burnout) is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low sense of personal fulfillment and is common among nurses.
Researchers from Stanford, Harvard and Barcelona University of Economics have analyzed several related studies to investigate the relationship between nurse burnout and health care quality and safety, as well as patient morbidity and mortality.
Two independent reviewers identified studies that reported quantitative associations between nurse burnout and safety data, patient satisfaction or quality of care.
In a study published in JAMA, a total of 85 studies were analyzed that included 288,581 nurses with an average age of 33.9 years, mostly women (87.2%) from 32 countries. Professional burnout amounted to 30.7%.
-more frequent nosocomial infections at 80%,
-adverse events or patient safety incidents at 58%
-missed care that was not provided at 42%.
Nurse burnout was also associated with lower patient satisfaction scores at 49%, but not with the frequency of patient complaints or abuse.
Finally, it was associated with lower nurse-rated quality of care by 56%, but not with the level of mortality.
In terms of patient safety, the effects were lower when burnout was related to a low sense of personal accomplishment than to emotional exhaustion.
In terms of quality of care, deterioration was observed through self-rating. nurses, where professionals reported:
-increased catheter feeding in nursing homes by 80%
-increased urinary catheter use in nursing homes by 78%.
The negative effect of nurse burnout on safety and quality of care was observed in most nursing specialties.
-without specialty, reduction of safety reached 50% and quality 66%
-in primary care, the decrease in quality reached 5%
-in acute cases, safety decreased by 45% and quality by 66%
-in intensive care, safety decreased by 38% and quality by 34%
-in oncology, safety decreased by 7% and quality by 45%
The analysis showed a relationship between nurse burnout and safety of care in most countries, specifically in: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Norway, Oman, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA, but not in Greece, Italy, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
While for quality of care, the relationship with burnout was observed in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Iceland, Iran, Italy, South Africa, Thailand and the USA, but not in Germany, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Source: prizrenpost
