Consequences of early career nurse burnout: A prospective long-term follow-up on cognitive functions, depressive symptoms, and insomnia

Abstract

Background Burnout is common among nurses and midwives. We examined whether an early career episode of burnout has long-term consequences on; a) cognitive functions, b) symptoms of depression, and/or c) insomnia for nurses a decade after graduation. Methods Symptoms of burnout were investigated in an observational longitudinal study of three national cohorts of registered nurses (RNs). Nursing students were recruited from all 26 of Sweden's nursing programs. Burnout was subsequently measured through annual assessment over the first three years post graduation, with one long-term follow-up 11–15 years after graduation. A total of 2474 nurses (62%) consented to participate at follow-up. Burnout was measured using items from the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, cognitive function by a study specific instrument, depressive symptoms by the Major Depression Inventory, and sleep problems using items from the Karolinska Sleep Questionnaire. We used logistic regression to identify factors associated with consequences of early career burnout, adjusting for concurrent levels at follow up. Findings The prevalence of nurses reporting high levels of burnout symptoms at least one of the first three years of working life was 299 (12·3%). High levels of burnout symptoms in early working life were significantly related to more frequent symptoms of cognitive dysfunction, depression, and impaired sleep a decade later when taking current burnout levels into account. After controlling for both current symptoms of burnout and the other outcome variables, nurses with early career burnout still reported more frequent problems with cognitive functions and sleep but not depression. Interpretation The results of this study show that the detrimental processes caused by overwhelming or chronic stress start early on in nurses’ careers and thus preventive efforts should preferably be introduced early on (e.g. as part of nursing education and onboarding programs). Funding AFA Insurance Grant [number 150284].

Perceptions of Patient Safety Culture and Medication Error Reporting among Early- and Mid-Career Female Nurses in South Korea

“…A report on global nursing policy [ 38 ] emphasizes the need to reduce burnout and turnover among early-career nurses. Early-career nurses experience burnout symptoms at least once in the first three years of their working life [ 35 ], and early turnover leads to a serious shortage of nursing staff [ 28 , 29 ], which, in turn, threatens patient safety [ 27 ]. To protect nurses and patients from medication errors, it is important to implement practical measures by meticulously analyzing and eliminating the barriers to medication error reporting and conducting well-designed studies for this purpose.…”

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Job satisfaction, burnout and turnover intention of nurses working in hospital during the pandemic COVID-19 in Turkey

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Assessment and diagnosis of insomnia for clinical and research practice: a scoping review protocol

“…Instruments are useful in the assessment of sleep quality, identification of the severity of disorders and diagnosis of insomnia (Riemann et al, 2017). Self-report instruments are usefull to assess sleep quality and other sleep patterns (Rudman et al, 2020), assess the severity of sleep disorders, as insomnia, in different populations and settings (Adell et al, 2020). Besides, these reliable tools are low-cost, fast and user-friendly (Costa et al, 2020).…”