Burnout and Nursing Care

Dear Colleagues,

The burnout concept was defined by Maslach and Leiter (1997) as a crisis in relationships with work,  a syndrome with three-dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a lack of personal accomplishment at the workplace that arises when functional coping strategies fail.

Therefore, when a workplace is seen as extremely demanding, emotional, mental, and spiritual exhaustion can arise because of a concomitant decrease in people's level of energy and enthusiasm (Consiglio et al., 2014; Maslach and Leiter, 2017). Ultimately, workers' enthusiasm, organizational commitment, and dedication to their work disappear, influencing nurses' job performance, quality of care, job satisfaction, and personal health (Koh et al., 2015; Maslach, 2003).

Nursing is a stressful profession dealing with human aspects of health and illness and can eventually lead to job dissatisfaction and burnout (Pavelková and Bužgová, 2015; Sabbah et al., 2012). The impact, on the nurse, of caring for people should be acknowledged, and nurses should be able to recognize early signs of burnout and seek appropriate help (Gamondi et al., 2013).

The experience of burnout has been related to a long list of adverse outcomes—personal, social, and organizational. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to presume that nurses' burnout interferes with their performance and subsequently with the care process (Garman et al., 2002; Maslach and Leiter, 2017).

Burnout in health-care services is undoubtedly a critical issue. In this sense, it is essential that evidence clearly explains the strategies nurses adopt, or should adopt, to help them in daily care.

This Special Issue of Nursing Reports intends to give visibility to this theme and discuss the existent evidence to support a paradigm change in preventing and managing burnout and nursing care in health-care contexts.

Papers addressing burnout and nursing care are invited for this Special Issue, particularly those combining a high academic standard and a practical focus.

Dr. Adriana Coelho
Dr. Vitor Parola
Guest Editors

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• nursing
• nurse–patient relations
• burnout
• coping strategies