Pediatric nurses‘ grief experience: its relationship with burnout and job satisfaction.

Abstract

The goal of this correlational study on 120 pediatric nurses was to examine relationships among grief experience following patients death, burnout, job satisfaction, and other environmental variables. Measurement used the Revised Grief Experience Inventory (RGEI), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), Index of Work Satisfaction (IWS) and Demographic Information Form (DIF). Results showed grief to have significant correlations; positive with burnout, negative with job satisfaction. Some nurses tended to have significantly higher emotional exhaustion if more of their primary patients died and higher guilt if dying patients were younger. Conclusions suggest a dynamic interaction among grief, burnout, job satisfaction, and environmental variables where they interact and relate to nurses' intention to leave unit, organization, or nursing. Recommendations for practice call for grief intervention and education programs. Recommended future research includes RGEI instrument refinement, evaluation of grief intervention and education programs and their impact on burnout and job satisfaction as outcome variables.