Compromiso laboral y burnout de las enfermeras en el ámbito sociosanitario

Objective: To find out and relate the levels of work engagement and burnout syndrome of nurses working in long-term geriatric care. Methods: Observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study. 156 nurses from public healthcare institutions responded to a self-administered questionnaire with validated instruments: the UWES-17 and the MBI questionnaire. Sociodemographic, occupational and health variables were analysed as well as work engagement and burnout syndrome. With regards to the statistical analysis, in addition to a descriptive and bivariate analysis, Spearman's rho test was used for the correlation of quantitative variables and linear regression models to explore the relationship between work engagement and burnout of nurses. Results: 69.87% of the nurses responded, 90.8% of whom were women. 50.5% of the nurses were between 36 and 65 years old. It was observed that most nurses had low work engagement (62.3%). 33.9% of the participants presented a low level of emotional ex-haustion and 38.5% had low depersonalization. We found 13.8% (n=12) of cases of burnout (people with a high level of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and low personal fulfilment). Nurses not categorized with burnout obtained significantly higher scores for work engagement (p<0.001) and higher levels in the vigour (p<0.001), absorption (p=0.040) and dedication (p<0.001) dimensions. Conclusions: One third of nurses working long-term geriatric care have high levels of work engagement. Professionals who do not suffer from burnout present greater levels of engagement and this could be a factor that is related to lower levels of emotional fatigue. From the point of view of the promotion of occupational health, strategies must be considered that encourage the work engagement of nurses to help in preventing burnout syndrome.