Relationship between Nursing Leadership Empowerment Behaviors and Nursing Burnout

Background & Aim: Burnout reduces the quality of life, performance level and organizational commitment of nurses and increases the intention to leave the job. Various studies have shown that empowering employees and involving them in decision-making reduces burnout. Effective empowering behaviors of leaders make employees feel empowered, independent and motivated. Nursing supervisors and managers play a very important role in empowering employees. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between nursing leadership empowering behaviors and nurses' burnout. Methods & Materials: This descriptive-correlational study was performed in 2020 in Rajaie Cardiovascular Medical and Research Center. The study population included nurses working in intensive care units (CCU and ICU). Participants were 165 nurses who were selected by convenience sampling. The Leadership Empowerment Behaviors questionnaire and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) were used to collect data. Data analysis was performed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression in SPSS software version 24. Results: The mean and standard deviation of the examined nurses' age was 36.73 ± 7.20 years and they were in the age range of 24 to 53 years. Also, 104 (63%) nurses were female and 61 (37%) were male. Most of the nurses (59.4%) were married. Pearson's correlation coefficients showed an inverse relationship between the scores of the dimensions of empowering behaviors of nursing leaders and the scores of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of the nurses' burnout questionnaire. Also, a direct relationship between the scores of dimensions of empowering behaviors of nursing leader’s questionnaire and personal accomplishment was seen. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, the empowering behaviors of the leaders were moderate. The higher the empowering behaviors of the leaders, the more the job burnout of nurses decreases in different dimensions.