Thesis

number of years worked as a nurse was also looked into. The research of Piko (op. cit.)
showed that the Hungarian nurses in her study reported comparatively increased burnout
levels and she showed a significant association between psychosomatic complaints and
burnout. Also, role conflict and number of years worked as a nurse could be connected to
psychosomatic complaints. Burnout, then especially emotional exhaustion, was shown to be
significantly connected to job dissatisfaction, and education was shown to have an impact on
job satisfaction. More precisely it was revealed that the nurses with higher education had
lower levels of job satisfaction. As it turned out that job satisfaction could not predict
emotional exhaustion, depersonalization or personal accomplishment; role conflict on the
other hand could be positively connected to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.
Education and burnout was also connected to each other in that education had a negative
effect on depersonalization and a positive effect on personal accomplishment. In this research
it was thus shown that the educational factor served as a protective factor when facing bad
work-related issues.
Piko (1999) conducted another research where she looked at the association between stress
connected to work, and the organizational and psychosocial factors in 218 Hungarian nurses’
workplace. In her research, Piko (op. cit.) investigated two different points, the first was if the
differences in psychosomatic symptoms that the nurses reported, and their health and health
risk behaviours could be connected to the stress levels of the nurses. The second point was if
the stress levels of the nurses could be associated with demographic variables, work-related
factors or psychosocial variables. Piko (op. cit.) found that nurses reports of their stress levels
could be connected to the nurses’ occurrence of psychosomatic symptoms and their reported
health and health risk behaviours. The researcher also found that education could be related to
stress levels, in that highest stress levels was reported by nurses with only a primary level of
education and the lowest stress levels were reported by nurses having a baccalaureate
education. In relation to this, other researchers have reported opposite results, in that nurses
having higher degrees of education also reported higher levels of stress (see for example Tyler
& Ellison, 1994). When it comes to Piko’s (1999) research it was also shown that nurses aged
51-60 years old were the ones reporting to be most susceptible to high stress levels. Also,
reported levels of the highest stress could be noticed for the nurses working on a rotating night
shift. Finally, the research did find that having social support from the colleagues served as
protective factor against stress levels, in that nurses experiencing high levels of collegial
social support reported less incidence of stress.