[Personality traits, psychological adjustment, and burnout syndrome in nursing staff]

The nursing staff is prone to develop Burnout because of the work environment and the stressful situations that develop among patients and their families. Burnout syndrome it's a persistent negative mental state, work related and present in non pathologic populations. Burnout has been associated to personality traits but the findings are too heterogeneous and do not allow plausible generalizations. To identify the relation between Burnout, Personality Traits and Psychological Adjustment, questionnaires were applied to 117 subjects, all members of the nursing staff from a University Hospital in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Traits in Burnout subjects were: sensibility to criticism, lack of confidence, poor social capacity and low Psychological Adjustment. The non-Burnout subjects presented traits of optimism, reality in the way they viewed events, proper social abilities and high Psychological Adjustment. Burnout Syndrome is not a personality type and the traits associated with this syndrome seems to be associated with Psychological Adjustment.