Job burnout in psychiatric and medical nurses in Isfahan, Islamic Republic of Iran

By means of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, we examined job burnout among randomly selected nurses working on psychiatric (55 nurses) and medical units (51 nurses) at 2 university hospitals in Isfahan during 2003. Psychiatric nurses experienced a greater degree of emotional exhaustion than the medical nurses (P 0.05). Significant positive correlation was noted between age, years of experience and frequency of on-calls and emotional exhaustion for the psychiatric nurses. Frequency of on-calls was also significantly associated with a sense of non-accomplishment. Longer duration of service was accompanied by higher degree of emotional depersonalization for the medical nurses.