Thesis

finding was reported by Piko (2006) where she showed that education and burnout was
connected to each other in that education had a negative effect on depersonalization and a
positive effect on personal accomplishment. Also in this research it was thus shown that the
educational factor served as a protective factor when facing bad work-related issues. In
contrast to this Alimoglu & Donmez (2005) showed that the level of education could only be
connected to emotional exhaustion in their study. Looking at these previous researches it is
clear that education does seem to have an effect on burnout in the majority of cases. The fact
that the present study could not find any connection between the two variables is thus not
supporting previous research in this area. Since there was a difference in the educational level
between the two samples of nurses it could have been interesting to see positive results in
connection to education and burnout, since both higher and lower education status could be
found in this sample of nurses. Thus, it could have been shown whether it was lower
educational level which had the most significant connection to burnout or if it was higher
educational level contributing to higher or lower burnout. It is a surprise that neither the lower
education level nor the higher educational level could be related to burnout in this sample of
nurses. However, again it must be mentioned that any comparisons between the samples must
be made with caution since the differences in education level were big.
In connection to the number of years working as a nurse, the Swedish nurses had worked
more in their profession than their Hungarian colleagues. However, since the Swedish nurses
were older than the Hungarian nurses this finding is not surprising. Thus, the comparison and
interpretations between the two samples has to be made with caution. In relation to burnout,
the number of years working as a nurse did not have a significant influence on burnout in the
present study. Brewer & Shapard (2004) states that, considerable researches have brought up
years of experience as having an effect on burnout. Some researches have not found any
relationships between years of experience and burnout, while other studies have found such
relationships (see for example Konert, 1997; Laub, 1998). The researches who have not found
a relationship between burnout and years of experience seem to be in minority. Many of the
researches looking into this area have found an association between the two variables. Brewer
& Shapard (2004) for example showed that nurses who had worked at their current workplace
for a longer period reported less burnout than nurses who had worked at their current
workplace for a shorter period of time. Also, Ergin (1993) showed that the level of burnout
increased in younger nurses with less working experience in comparison to older nurses with
more working experience. In addition, Oehler et al. (1991) demonstrated that newly recruited