Relationship between turnover and burnout among Japanese hospital nurses.

Burnout is construed as a phenomenon occurring among professionals who work with people , and as a result raises serious problems for human service workers, especially hospital nurses. Nurses’ burnout, known to be related to age and working years, can have an adverse impact on nurses’ development and the quality of care in medical institutes . In the Maslach Burnout Inventory—General Survey (MBI-GS) which measures burnout in general professions, burnout consists of three factors: exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. Exhaustion refers to fatigue, cynicism refers to indifference or a distant attitude toward work, professional efficacy refers to both social and non-social accomplishment at work. Tao and Kudo, in a cross-sectional study, suggested that nurses’ burnout would result in their intention of leaving. A few other studies which have investigated Japanese nurses’ turnover by cross-sectional study have indicated that the reasons for their turnover were low supervisory support, health problems, inadequate career development, low job satisfaction, familial issues, poor working conditions, low job control, high job demand, and depressive status. We have investigated the factors associated with nurses’ turnover in order to understand the factors contributing to the turnover of high-skilled nurses with the objective of maintaining the quality of nursing in medical institutes. With reference to the indication of Tao et al., we hypothesized that Japanese nurses’ turnover was associated with burnout, and we explored the relationship between turnover and burnout by a follow-up study in order to certify our hypothesis.