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Quality of care and health professional burnout: narrative literature review

Niamh Humphries (Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland)
Karen Morgan (Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland and PU-RCSI School of Medicine, Perdana University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Mary Catherine Conry (Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland)
Yvonne McGowan (Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland)
Anthony Montgomery (Department of Education and Social Policy, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece)
Hannah McGee (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland)

International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance

ISSN: 0952-6862

Article publication date: 6 May 2014

4259

Abstract

Purpose

Quality of care and health professional burnout are important issues in their own right, however, relatively few studies have examined both. The purpose of this paper is to explore quality of care and health professional burnout in hospital settings.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a narrative literature review of quality of care and health professional burnout in hospital settings published in peer-reviewed journals between January 2000 and March 2013. Papers were identified via a search of PsychInfo, PubMed, Embase and CINNAHL electronic databases. In total, 30 papers which measured and/or discussed both quality of care and health professional burnout were identified.

Findings

The paper provides insight into the key health workforce-planning issues, specifically staffing levels and workloads, which impact upon health professional burnout and quality of care. The evidence from the review literature suggests that health professionals face heavier and increasingly complex workloads, even when staffing levels and/or patient-staff ratios remain unchanged.

Originality/value

The narrative literature review suggests that weak retention rates, high turnover, heavy workloads, low staffing levels and/or staffing shortages conspire to create a difficult working environment for health professionals, one in which they may struggle to provide high-quality care and which may also contribute to health professional burnout. The review demonstrates that health workforce planning concerns, such as these, impact on health professional burnout and on the ability of health professionals to deliver quality care. The review also demonstrates that most of the published papers published between 2000 and 2013 addressing health professional burnout and quality of care were nursing focused.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The study is part of the OCRAB project “Improving quality and safety in the hospital: the link between organisational culture, burnout and quality of care”, funded by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-HEALTH-2009-single-stage) under grant agreement No. (242084).

Citation

Humphries, N., Morgan, K., Catherine Conry, M., McGowan, Y., Montgomery, A. and McGee, H. (2014), "Quality of care and health professional burnout: narrative literature review", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 293-307. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-08-2012-0087

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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