Effectiveness of Individual-Based Strategies to Reduce Nurse Burnout: An Umbrella Review

This umbrella review aims to comprehensively synthesize and analyze the findings of available systematic reviews on the effectiveness of individual-based strategies for reducing nurse burnout occurring in hospital-based settings.

Following JBI guidelines, an umbrella review was conducted to integrate the effectiveness of various strategies to reduce burnout. Systematic reviews were searched in the Embase, MEDLINE (Ovid), Cochrane Library, CINAHL (EBSCO), Scopus, and WOS databases. Inclusion criteria included studies published in any language from database inception to April 2023. Eligibility assessment involved two independent reviewers who evaluated titles, abstracts, and full texts. The systematic reviews were critically evaluated using JBI SUMARI. The results were narratively synthesized and grouped by strategy.

Eleven systematic reviews were included, covering the years 2012 to 2021. The appraisal tools varied, though all included reviews were of high quality. The strategies were categorized into three domains: mental health (51%), physical activities (26%), and professional competence (13%). The interventions most identified were mindfulness-based stress reduction for mental health, yoga for physical activities, and professional competence education. These individual-based strategies were shown to effectively eliminate emotional exhaustion (72.7%), depersonalization (44%), and occupational stress (78%) among nurses in hospital-based settings.

Mental health, physical activities, and professional competence are strategies to reduce nurse burnout. Implementing these approaches in healthcare settings can improve emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and occupational stress of nurses.