Nurse burnout and patient satisfaction: Vahey et al. correlation study

Nurse Study Review

Vahey et al. (2004) research indicated the importance of investigating the role of environment and clinical situation for both nurse performance and patient satisfaction. This study is a quantitative approach to investigating these topics as it sought to find correlations between these variables.

The article is premised on the idea that nurses employed in hospitals are experiencing greater workloads resulting in career fatigue and burnout. The article incorporated past research on these topics and suggested that "Indeed, more than 40% of hospital staff nurses score in the high range for job-related burnout, and more than 1 in 5 hospital staff nurses say they intend to leave their hospital jobs within 1 year. The understaffing of nurses and the overwork of health professionals in hospitals are ranked by consumers as major threats to patient safety, and more patients are bringing their own caregivers to the hospital with them."

The significance to nursing of this problems is explicit. By improving the ability of nurses in their clinical environment, an effect should be noticed by patient satisfaction on the other end of the spectrum. The objective of this study was to determine if there is a correlation between nurse burnout and patient satisfaction while exploring the impact of the features of the environment and organizational climate in which they work.

Methods of Study

The study used a survey from 1991 to derive data from patients and nurses. For this study 820 nurses were used and 621 patients were used to gather the information. The information collected from this survey incorporated the Nursing Work Index and Maslach Burnout Inventory, while the patients survey was measured using the La Monica Oberst Patient Satisfaction Scale. There are several key measurements that the study aimed to divide and organize its findings. These included the Nurse Work Environment, Hospital and Unit Characteristics, Nurse Burnout and Intent to Leave, Patient Satisfaction, and Nurse and Patient Characteristics.

Ethical Considerations

The research appeared to have been conducted in an ethical manner. The research was supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research. This study was supported in part by Grant R01-NR02280, "Outcomes of Inpatient AIDS Care," from the National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health, by an institutional postdoctoral fellowship (T32-NR07104), National Institute of Nursing Research held by Doris Vahey at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

The patients privacy was respected during this research. The only slight ethical problem evident with this research attempt deals with the age of the data. The 1991 data used for this study published in 2004 creates some issues about relevance of the study. The nursing landscape in 2015 is much different than 2004 or even 1991 so the impact of this study is limited by its dated material and concepts of nursing.