Burnout Syndrome in Female Nurses and its Association to some Gender Role Characteristics

Abstract

Objective: to determine the frequency and distribution of the Burnout syndrome in a group of female nurses and its association to some characteristics related to their gender role. Material and methods: a descriptive, observational and transversal study made to nurses working in a social security institution nationwide. The survey was applied to 500 nurses representing the different levels of health care attention. They survey was self applied and had different data such as: identification, social and demographic characteristics, academic and working data, gender characteristics and the Maslach Burnout Inventory edited in Spanish, in order to identify the syndrome as well as the Zung scale to rule out depression symptoms. Results: the frequency of Burnout increased from 14.4% to 19% after ruling out depression. The most affected aspects of the Burnout were emotional fatigue and personal achievements. The identifi ed risk factors were the feeling of loneliness and the overload of the home chores, (RM 2.74 IC 95% 1.37- 5.49) as well as a bad relation with their partners (RM= 10.56 and IC 95% 2.69-44.42 p=0.0002). Likewise, the study demonstrated that the syndrome has an association to alcohol abuse RM=2.44. Conclusions: the frequency of the burnout syndrome shows an important relation to the gender role characteristics that has been culturally assigned to women. In women, the aspect that contributed the most to the syndrome was emotional fatigue.