Comparative effectiveness of individual-level psychosocial interventions for nurse burnout and its core dimensions: A...

Nurses face heavy workloads, emotional labor, and frequent shift work, contributing to physical and mental stress. This stress leads to burnout, negatively impacting their health and the quality of patient care. Effective interventions are essential to mitigate nurse burnout, but the relative efficacy of these strategies remains unclear.

This study systematically evaluates the relative efficacy of different interventions in alleviating nurse burnout and its core dimensions-emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal achievement.

A comprehensive search across nine databases was conducted for studies published from inception to January 15, 2026. A network meta-analysis using a frequentist approach was employed to rank the efficacy of interventions. Inconsistencies between direct and indirect comparisons were examined using the node-splitting method. The surface under the cumulative ranking curve was used to assess the probability of each intervention's ranking. The risk of bias was evaluated using the revised Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool.

A total of 40 studies involving 3119 participants were included in the analysis. The network meta-analysis revealed that mindfulness ranked highest for reducing overall nurse burnout (SMD = -0.89, 95% CI: -1.39, -0.39), with a ranking probability of 78.2%. Social support ranked second (SMD = -0.78, 95% CI: -1.34, -0.22) with a ranking probability of 68.1%, followed by cognitive behavioral therapy, which ranked third (SMD = -0.69, 95% CI: -1.50, 0.12) with a ranking probability of 60.6%. For the dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, mindfulness showed the highest ranking probabilities, with 88.1% (SMD = -2.89, 95% CI: -4.75, -1.03) for emotional exhaustion and 73.0% (SMD = -1.53, 95% CI: -2.74, -0.33) for depersonalization. For enhancing personal achievement, social support had the highest ranking probability (SMD =2.88, 95% CI: 0.19, 5.57), with a ranking probability of 65.5%.

The results of this network meta-analysis suggest that mindfulness emerged as the most strongly supported intervention for improving nurse burnout. Mindfulness also showed the highest ranking probabilities for addressing emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, while social support emerged as the most strongly supported intervention for enhancing personal achievement. However, due to study limitations, further research, including multi-arm, large-sample, and long-term follow-up trials, is necessary to strengthen the evidence and guide clinical decision-making in developing more precise intervention strategies.

This review was registered with PROSPERO (CRD420261297209).