Factors associated with burnout among Chinese operating room nurses: a meta-analysis

Burnout is prevalent among nursing staff, especially in the operating room, which is a high-intensity, high-pressure and fast-paced work environment. As the prevalence of nurse burnout increases, reducing the burnout of operating room nurses helps to improve the physical and mental health of nurses. Thus, stabilising the nursing team can also guarantee the quality of medical care, which in turn improves patient satisfaction. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis based on the Pearson correlation coefficient to quantitatively analyse the factors related to burnout among operating room nurses and to provide a reliable basis for preventing and intervening in burnout among operating room nurses.

CNKI, Wanfang Database, Wipro Database, China Biomedical Database, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL and Cochrane Library Database were searched, and the keywords 'operating room', 'nurses', 'burnout' and the corresponding English terms were used for the search. The time limit for the search was set from the creation of the databases to April 2024. Two researchers with evidence-based knowledge conducted the search, independently screened the literature according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted the information and assessed the quality of the included literature using the quality assessment criteria for observational studies recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, and performed a meta-analysis of the literature using the r value as an indicator of the outcome in RevMan 5.4 software.

A total of 25 papers were included, with a sample size of 6,061 cases. The quality of the literature was moderate. The meta-analysis showed that job stress (r = 0.56, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.42-0.68, I² = 86%), work-family conflict (r = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.36-0.64, I² = 82%), willingness to leave (r = 0.42, 95% CI: 0.34-0.49, I² = 0%) and hidden absenteeism (r = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.41-0.57, I² = 55%) were positively correlated with burnout (p < 0.01), job immersion (r = - 0.39, 95% CI: - 0.40 to - 0.32, I² = 0%), social support (r = - 0.46, 95%: - 0.58 to - 0.33, I² = 74%), psychological capital (r = - 0.53, 95% CI: - 0.60 to - 0.45, I² = 72%) and well-being (r = - 0.54, 95% CI: - 0.73 to - 0.27, I² = 88%) were negatively correlated (p < 0.01).

This study shows that burnout of operating room nurses is related to various factors, such as job stress, social support, work-family conflict, psychological capital and well-being. Therefore, it is suggested that hospital management should alleviate the burnout of operating room nurses from the multi-dimensional aspects of improving the work environment, enhancing social support and improving personal psychological capital and well-being to effectively alleviate burnout.

(PROSPERO) International prospective register of systematic reviews: CRD42024547524.