About 38% of inpatient psychiatric mental health registered nurses reported high burnout, while 22% intended to leave their jobs within the next year, according to a study accepted for publication July 27 in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, based in Philadelphia, combined data from the 2023-2024 Penn Nurses4All study and the 2023 American Hospital Association Annual Survey. The analysis included 740 nurses working in psychiatric units at 297 general acute care or freestanding psychiatric hospitals across 10 U.S. states.
They also used multilevel logistic regression to examine associations between the nurse work environment and job outcomes while accounting for nurse- and hospital-level characteristics. The nurse work environment was measured with a validated five-item scale covering staffing adequacy, administrative support, supervisor leadership, physician-nurse relationships and nursing philosophy, each rated on a 1-to-4 scale.
Because the study is cross-sectional, the researchers noted they cannot establish a causal relationship between work environment and job outcomes — only an association.
Here are five things to know:
1. High burnout was common. Among the 740 inpatient psychiatric mental health registered nurses studied, 282, or 38.1%, reported high burnout. That’s in line with burnout rates among nurses generally in the U.S., but higher than a recent international estimate of 25% among psychiatric nurses specifically.
2. Nearly 1 in 4 nurses intended to leave. Overall, 163 nurses, or 22%, reported intending to leave their jobs within the next year. Another 218, or 29.5%, reported job dissatisfaction.
3. Better work environments were associated with substantially lower burnout odds. For every 1-point increase in the nurse work environment score, the odds of high burnout decreased about 70% after adjustment for nurse and hospital characteristics.
4. Work environment was also tied to retention and satisfaction. A 1-point increase in the nurse work environment score was associated with a 53% decrease in the odds of intending to leave within a year and a 59% decrease in the odds of job dissatisfaction.
5. Staffing stood out. Staffing adequacy was the only one of the five work-environment domains that was significantly associated with all three outcomes: burnout, intent to leave and job dissatisfaction. It was also the lowest-rated work-environment domain, with a mean score of 2.23 on a 1-to-4 scale.
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