Phenomenological Study on Burnout Experience of Clinical Nurses Who have Turnover Intention

This study was aimed to understand the meaning and essentials of the experience of burnout for hospital nurses with turnover intention.

The design was a qualitative research of phenomenological study. Participants: Seven hospital nurses who had worked over three years and had experiences of turnover intention in a hospital with over 400 beds were included.

Nine meaningful themes related to burnout experiences and four theme clusters of 1) battery warning sounds almost out; 2) the player who hit the drum and double-headed drum; 3) the target flying arrow without a break; and 4) the pendulum swaying to turn over. Registered nurses (RNs) felt burnout with an overload of work and by the thought that it was illegal action for registered nurses to receive insufficient rewards for their work. RNs also experienced there were no problem solving strategies to verbal violence by patient and medical team.

The findings show that burnout experiences for those who had turnover intention was developed from the insight that insufficient training to do work independently with over-load for nurses was not ethical. It suggests that it is necessary to rethink training systems for nursing and hospitals to relieve turnover intention.