Thesis

ecame evident after the nurse had been working for one year at her current workplace. It is
often the case that young nurses start their nursing careers with idealistic hopes of control
connected to her workplace and patients. It has been shown that young nurses have increased
levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization than older nurses. However, in older
nurses there has been shown a decrease in personal accomplishment and explanations given
for burnout in this age group has been a refusal to learn new things. In the research by Potter
(op. cit.) personality was also looked into and to what extent different types of personality
might be more prone to burnout. Personality types which have been shown to affect burnout
are stubborn, rigid, inadaptable and critical personalities, and nurses with these personality
characteristics might behave in the above mentioned way due to the experience of burnout.
Potter (2006) also showed in her literature review that a comparison between emergency ward
nurses and general ward nurses’ workplace-related stress was higher for the emergency nurses
than for the general ward nurses. However, she also pointed out that scarce amount of
research has been conducted to look at burnout for nurses working at emergency wards. On
the other hand, the research which has been conducted has shown that burnout is a significant
consequence for many nurses working at emergency wards, and that there is a high degree of
emergency nurses suffering from burnout.
Gulalp, Karcioglu, Sari & Koseoglu (2008) wanted to look at nurses’ characteristics working
at emergency wards in connection to burnout. When it comes to burnout, the researchers
showed that 53% of the nurses were suffering from burnout, with high levels of emotional
exhaustion and depersonalization, and low levels of personal accomplishment. Factors in the
working environment contributing to the burnout levels were too many patients at the ward,
low levels of organization, not being enough nurses at the ward, aggressive patients, and low
salaries. Apart from factors within the working environment, the researchers also looked at
factors in family life satisfactions. For example, it has been shown that single nurses report
higher levels of burnout than married ones; however this was not the case in the mentioned
research. In Gulalp et al’s. (op. cit.) research it was shown that burnout was not related to
marital status, number of children, and private life satisfaction. In accordance with this the
researchers point out the fact that in their research organizational factors had a more
significant impact on burnout in these emergency nurses than private life satisfaction.