Effects of nurses’ burnout on patients’ safety : descriptive literature review

Abstract

This thesis aimed to explore how nurses' burnout affects patient safety by critically assessing the existing literature. A total of 655 articles were identified and extracted for review from various electronic databases, with the main sources including Pub Med, Ovid Medline, and CINAHL. These articles were screened based on their title, abstract, and full text. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were also applied, and only 18 of these articles proceeded to be used for further review in this thesis, which fully satisfied the search criteria set by the author of this thesis. Findings from the 18 different articles showed that nurses´ burnout causes a major effect as medication errors, increases patient illness, and Death. Nurses experiencing burnout are likely to mishandle medications, prescriptions, and distribution. They view these processes as simple and repetitive, which do not require critical thinking, which in turn leads to medication errors and adverse patient reactions.