Study On The Relationship Of Attribution Style And Social Support With Job Burnout Of Nurses

Objective: Investigate on the job burnout situation of the nurses in the four comprehensive hospitals of Jiujiang City, and explore the relationship of attribution style and social support with their job burnout.Method: 370 nurses in the four comprehensive hospitals of Jiujiang City have been sampled and surveyed through questionnaires and interviews on the middle of July, 2008. The questionnaires include: Demographic Data Form, Dr. Yongxin Li's Chinese Maslach Burnout Inventory (CMBI) used widely in our country, Chineses Attribution Style Qestionnaire (ASQ) and Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS).Results: 1. There exists some job burnout in the nurses of the hospitals in Jiujiang City. Among them, 52.7% of the nurses present the low level of job burnout. 34.9% nurses feel job burnout moderately and 9.1% strongly. 2. Demographic factors such as marriage status, bearing status, professional title, the length of time working influence job burnout to some extent. Nurses of single, no children, register nurse, working for 1～5 years have high level of job burnout. Age and education level have no relationship with job burnout. 3. Nurses job burnout is related with attribution style. Negative attribution style is positively correlated with emotion exhaustion (EE) and negatively with personal achievement (PA); positive attribution style is negatively correlated with depersonalization. 4. Social support has obvious effect on job burnout. Emotion exhaustion (EE) has negative relationship with four aspects of social support; depersonalization is negatively related with objective support score and social support score; personal achievement (PA) is positively related with objective support score, subjective support score and social support score. 5. The findings of Multiple Stepwise Regression Analysis: The factors influencing on nurses emotion exhaustion of nurses are negative attribution style, objective social support and the use extent of socical support in sequence; the factor influencing on nurses depersonalization is positive-negative attribution style; the factors influencing on nurses personal achievement (PA) are positive-nagative attribution style and the length of time working.Conclustion: There exists job burnout in the nurses of Jiujiang City, most of them present low and middle job burnout. The main factors influencing on nurses job burnout are attribution style and social support. The more nagtive attribution style nurses take and the less social support nurses receive, the higher level job burnout nurses have. Therefore, the supervisors may prevent or reduce nurses job burnout through adjusting attribution style (e.g. attribution intervention or exercise). Society, hospital and family should give nurses more social support. Through taking the above strategies, nurses job burnout will be prevented or reduced; health will be promoted; work effectiveness will be improved.