Thesis

connection to them was not thought of as such a negative one. The experienced stress might
also be outweighed by all the positive attributes of having children and thus the children are
mostly viewed in a positive light instead of a negative one. Thus, having no children and
missing out on the positive aspects of raising children was thought of as being more stressful
than the stress caused by actually having children. In the literature there is evidence for both
which shows that both ideas mentioned could be possibly true for nurses.
In the light of education, there were major differences between the Swedish and the
Hungarian nurses and it turned out that Swedish nurses were more educated than the
Hungarian nurses. An important factor to mention here is the required educational level in the
two countries and there are probably differences in the university studies in becoming a nurse
in the two countries. Thus, comparisons between the two countries must again be made with
caution and it has to be kept in mind that maybe Swedish nurses are required to go through a
longer educational process than the Hungarian nurses. The differences could also be due to the
age differences between the two samples. Since the Swedish nurses were shown to be older
than the Hungarian nurses, maybe the Swedish nurses have had the opportunity to educate
themselves further to a higher degree than the Hungarian nurses. Younger nurses will
probably want to work as a nurse at their current workplace for a couple of years before they
think about making a second diploma or educate themselves further. Thus, again
interpretations regarding the educational aspect between the Swedish and Hungarian nurses
have to be made with caution. Looking at education in connection to burnout, it was shown
that the educational level did not have a significant influence on burnout in this study. In
general in previous research it can be seen that educational levels and burnout seem to be
associated with each other. Maslach (1982) have for example shown that burnout seem to
occur among those people who have a college education but who do not have postgraduate
training. In relation to this, Tyler & Ellison (1994) reported opposite results, in that nurses
having higher degrees of education also reported higher levels of stress. However higher
education does not necessarily mean that it is causing burnout to a higher degree, since for
example Barry (1984) showed that as the level of a nurse’s education was increasing so was
the nurse’s experience of personal accomplishment, workplace satisfaction, and with higher
educational status nurses also coped more sufficiently with work related stressors. All of these
factors had in turn a reduced effect on the burnout levels of the nurses. Also Dahl & O’Neal
(1993) reported similar finding in that higher educational levels in their study were connected
to a more sufficient way of coping with stress and decreased burnout levels. An interesting