Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of nurse staffing, nurse education and work experience on patients’ length of stay (LOS) in the Greek public hospitals. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study, with retrospective administrative data, was implemented. From all seven Regional Health Authorities of Greece, 25 general surgical units in 17 public hospitals participated in the study. Findings All over the hospitals were studied, 32,287 patients ⩾17 years old and 203 nursing staff, who were working in the study units, were included in the analysis. According to the multivariate linear regression model, increased years of experience as a nurse (b= −0.04, 95% CI= −0.06 to −0.02, p=0.001) and increased percentage of registered nurse to the total nursing staff (b= −1.18, CI= −1.88 to −0.47, p=0.03) were associated with decreased patient LOS. Originality/value This was the first extended study in Greece, which explored the relationship between nurse staffing, nurse education, work experience and the LOS. The role that nurse staffing play together with its characteristics in the provision toward the quality healthcare services has already been recognized worldwide. The findings revealed the great shortage of nursing staff and the significant correlation between the work experience and educational level to patients’ LOS.

Introduction: The working environment in special education school units may lead to personnel burnout syndrome for the various professionals working in such field. Objective: To investigate the extent of burnout syndrome among special education school units’ personnel and the factors affecting its manifestation. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted, with a convenience sample of 346 people, working at special education school units. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory was used for data collection. Results: Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency value was 0.85 regarding personal burnout, 0.73 regarding professional burnout, and 0.83 regarding burnout related to students. As for the participants, 45% were teachers, 23.7% school nurses, 12.9% speech therapists and 18.4% other professionals. The average on all three subscales of the inventory was <50, which shows a low level of burnout. According to the results of the multivariate linear regression, permanent (coefficient b=8.0, 95% CI=3.2-12.9, p=0.001) and contract staff (coefficient b=15.4, 95% CI=8.4-22.4, p<0.001) presented higher levels of personal burnout, in comparison to substitute personnel. Permanent staff (coefficient b=8.9, 95% CI=3.9-13.9, p=0.001) and contract staff (coefficient b=10.0, 95% CI 95=2.9-17.2, p=0.006) presented higher levels of professional burnout, in comparison to substitute staff. Finally, the higher the work experience in the specialty, the higher the level of burnout related to students (coefficient b=0.4, 95% CI=0.01-0.7, p=0.042). Conclusions: The special education school units’ personnel go presented low levels of burnout. It is proposed that more studies would be conducted in the future, where, apart from the demographic characteristics of the participants, other factors that contribute to personnels’ burnout syndrome would be examined, such as work environment characteristics.

Background Nurses experience high levels of job burnout and low levels of job satisfaction, while COVID-19 pandemic has deteriorated working conditions. Aim To compare levels of job burnout and job satisfaction among nurses and other healthcare workers after the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we investigated the influence of demographic and job characteristics on job burnout and satisfaction. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study with a convenience sample of 1760 healthcare workers. We collected data during June 2023. Our healthcare workers came from different clinical settings including hospitals, health centers, etc. We used the single item burnout measure to measure levels of burnout among our healthcare workers. Moreover, we used the “Job Satisfaction Survey” to measure levels of satisfaction in our sample. Results Nurses experienced moderate and high levels of burnout more often than other healthcare workers. In particular, 91.1% of nurses experienced high levels of burnout, while the respective percentage for the other healthcare workers was 79.9%. Nurses’ satisfaction was lower than other healthcare workers. In particular, 61.0% of nurses experienced low levels of satisfaction, while the respective percentage for the other healthcare workers was 38.8%. Multivariable analysis identified that nurses, healthcare workers with a MSc/PhD diploma, shift workers, and those who considered their workplace as understaffed had higher burnout score and lower satisfaction score. Moreover, we found that clinical experience was associated with increased burnout and decreased satisfaction. Conclusions Our results showed that nursing profession was an independent factor of job burnout and job satisfaction. Several other demographic and job characteristics affected burnout and satisfaction. Policy makers, organizations and managers should adopt appropriate interventions to improve work conditions.