TY - JOUR
T1 - Female nurses’ burnout symptoms
T2 - No association with the Hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis
AU - Guo, Yufang
AU - Lam, Louisa
AU - Luo, Yuanhui
AU - Plummer, Virginia
AU - Cross, Wendy
AU - Li, Hui
AU - Yin, Yizhen
AU - Zhang, Jingping
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Across the world, hospital nurses experience a high level of burnout. Exploring biochemical markers of burnout could help to understand physiological changes and may provide useful evidence for preventing burnout symptoms. The current study included 94 female nurses from one Chinese third-level hospital. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) was used to investigate burnout symptoms: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, reduced professional efficacy, as well as the burnout average. The HPT axis was tested by checking blood levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), thyroxin (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). Nonparametric tests showed that no significant difference in biochemical markers was found between the burnout and non-burnout groups. Spearman correlation analysis found that biochemical markers had no significant association with burnout symptoms, except weakly negative associations between reduced professional efficacy and blood pressure and heart rate. These findings show a rather poor correlation of the HPT axis on burnout symptoms. Expanding the biochemical index of the HPT axis, comparing well-defined samples and using longitudinal studies are recommended for further studies.
AB - Across the world, hospital nurses experience a high level of burnout. Exploring biochemical markers of burnout could help to understand physiological changes and may provide useful evidence for preventing burnout symptoms. The current study included 94 female nurses from one Chinese third-level hospital. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) was used to investigate burnout symptoms: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, reduced professional efficacy, as well as the burnout average. The HPT axis was tested by checking blood levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), thyroxin (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). Nonparametric tests showed that no significant difference in biochemical markers was found between the burnout and non-burnout groups. Spearman correlation analysis found that biochemical markers had no significant association with burnout symptoms, except weakly negative associations between reduced professional efficacy and blood pressure and heart rate. These findings show a rather poor correlation of the HPT axis on burnout symptoms. Expanding the biochemical index of the HPT axis, comparing well-defined samples and using longitudinal studies are recommended for further studies.
KW - Burnout
KW - Cynicism
KW - Emotional exhaustion
KW - Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Thyroid
KW - Reduced professional efficacy
KW - Stress
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85006892887
U2 - 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2016.11.020
DO - 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2016.11.020
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85006892887
SN - 0306-4530
VL - 77
SP - 47
EP - 50
JO - Psychoneuroendocrinology
JF - Psychoneuroendocrinology
ER -
