Exploring burnout: An online survey among diverse nursing teams in Germany

Immigration and the increasing shift toward nursing as a university degree lead to greater diversity in German nursing teams and have an impact on cooperation in everyday nursing care. Studies on the interactions between psychosocial working conditions and individual diversity characteristics on the mental health of nurses are scarce.

This study examines the relationships between psychosocial working conditions of nurses (psychological safety in the team, cooperation with physicians, leadership quality, staffing on the ward) and individual sociodemographic and occupational characteristics (age, gender, migration experience, qualifications, management responsibility, number of close personal contacts, partnership, parental status) of nurses with burnout.

The data basis is a cross-sectional online survey which was conducted as part of a mixed-methods study. Validated questionnaire instruments (e.g. COPSOQ, PES-NWI-R, PS-C) were used to assess the general work situation of nursing staff and to measure personal burnout.

Inpatient care teams in two healthcare companies with several hospitals in a major German city.

684 nurses of legal age with high diversity in terms of countries of origin, (formal) qualification profiles and other social differentiations such as age, gender, and ethnicity.

In addition to descriptive and bivariate analyses, linear blockwise regressions were performed to identify stepwise associations of working conditions and sociodemographic variables with burnout. Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (version 29.0).

N = 632 nurses were included in the analysis. The participants were predominantly female (76%), on average 44 years old, born in Germany (88%) and had three or more years of professional training (78%). Factors that were associated with lower burnout rates were a more positive assessment of psychological safety in their own nursing team (β = -0.16, p = .003) and a more positive assessment of staffing levels with nurses on their own ward (β = -0.32, p ≤ .001). Having one to two close relations in the personal environment had a negative impact on one`s personal burnout (β = 0.12, p = .046) in comparison to six or more close contacts. The other characteristics examined were not statistically significant in multivariable regression analyses.

Social support in the immediate care team and sufficient staffing were associated with the mental health of nurses. In day-to-day nursing care, improvements in cooperation within the core team and an adequate staffing ratio appear to enable a reduction in occupational stressors for nursing staff. Interactions of the factors investigated with other occupational and private stressors require future research.

Better collaboration and proper staffing ratios in diverse nursing teams help reduce burnout in everyday nursing practice.