Carers' burnout in caring for persons with dementia

Abstract

This study's main purpose was to assess whether burnout factors are present in nurses working within a geriatric setting - particularly in those nurses caring for patients with dementia. Another aim was to identify any possible links between burnout and the work environment and therefore provide suggestions to improve the said environment. In order to investigate the above two tools were chosen which were considered to be most relevant in this field of study: • Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS) • Areas of Work Life Survey (AWLS) Relevant permissions in order to use these tools was sought and obtained. The manager of nursing services within SVPR, Mr. Alfred Briffa, was also presented with a brief summary of the study and permission was obtained in order to use his staff as subjects. Relevant Departmental Nursing Managers and Nursing Officers were also informed by Mr. Briffa. A quantitative approach was chosen for this small-scale study were subjects had to fill two separate questionnaires (MBI-GS and AWLS) that would not take more than 10 minutes in all. The subjects were 30 qualified nurses that were recruited through a convenience sampling method without seeking any specific gender requirements. However it was deemed to be appropriate to be as impartial as possible and hence try to include an equal amount of Male and Female Nurses. All subjects were nurses who had a direct involvement with the care of geriatric patients including those with dementia. In order not to influence the responsiveness of subjects and so as to provide maximum privacy during data collection, the researcher only had contact with the Nursing Officers of the relevant wards who were then instructed to ask their staff to fill out a questionnaire. A response rate of 83% was obtained with 14% of the data discarded due to too many unanswered questions on the questionnaire. Only 3% of the subjects refused to give consent to participate in this study. Data was analysed using an SPSS software suite (PAWS Statistics Release 18.0.0) so as to provide the relevant graphical output and also to check for relevant differences between subjects by using T-Tests. The findings were classified separately according to which questionnaire they belonged so that the factors of the work environment and burnout are looked at separately before being compared. The results obtained were not directly as expected by the researcher as the Exhaustion component of the MBI was initially decreasing with work experience but increasing sharply later on versus the expected gradual increase. This prompted the researcher to inquire into whether newly graduated nurses would need additional safeguards in order to deal with the reality of the work environment. A slight difference between risk factors for Female nurses was also found and discussed. On the basis of such data from this small scale study and because normative values were given for the AWLS, recommendations were made in order to guard nurses further within their work environment. The main area that needed improvement within the work environment was found to be control. It is hoped that this would enhance engagement with work and therefore promote betterment in the quality of life of nurses caring for such patients.