Factors associated with burnout among Chinese operating room nurses: a meta-analysis

(2025) 24:312 Dai et al. BMC Nursing https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-025-02914-3 BMC Nursing Open Access RESEARCH Factors associated with burnout among Chinese operating room nurses: a meta‑analysis Xiaoxia Dai1,2, Caixia Xie3,2*, Yunlian Wu1,2, Tian Chen2,3 and Fang Lu4 Abstract Background Burnout is prevalent among nursing staff, especially in the operating room, which is a high-intensity, high-pressure and fast-paced work environment. As the prevalence of nurse burnout increases, reducing the burnout of operating room nurses helps to improve the physical and mental health of nurses. Thus, stabilising the nursing team can also guarantee the quality of medical care, which in turn improves patient satisfaction. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis based on the Pearson correlation coefficient to quantitatively analyse the factors related to burnout among operating room nurses and to provide a reliable basis for preventing and intervening in burnout among operating room nurses. Methods CNKI, Wanfang Database, Wipro Database, China Biomedical Database, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL and Cochrane Library Database were searched, and the keywords ‘operating room’, ‘nurses’, ‘burnout’ and the corresponding English terms were used for the search. The time limit for the search was set from the creation of the databases to April 2024. Two researchers with evidence-based knowledge conducted the search, independently screened the literature according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted the information and assessed the quality of the included literature using the quality assessment criteria for observational studies recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, and performed a meta-analysis of the literature using the r value as an indicator of the outcome in RevMan 5.4 software. Results A total of 25 papers were included, with a sample size of 6,061 cases. The quality of the literature was moderate. The meta-analysis showed that job stress (r = 0.56, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.42–0.68, I2 = 86%), work–family conflict (r = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.36–0.64, I2 = 82%), willingness to leave (r = 0.42, 95% CI: 0.34–0.49, I2 = 0%) and hidden absenteeism (r = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.41–0.57, I2 = 55%) were positively correlated with burnout (p < 0.01), job immersion (r = − 0.39, 95% CI: − 0.40 to − 0.32, I2 = 0%), social support (r = − 0.46, 95%: − 0.58 to − 0.33, I2 = 74%), psychological capital (r = − 0.53, 95% CI: − 0.60 to − 0.45, I2 = 72%) and well-being (r = − 0.54, 95% CI: − 0.73 to − 0.27, I2 = 88%) were negatively correlated (p < 0.01). *Correspondence: Caixia Xie Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2025. 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To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Dai et al. BMC Nursing (2025) 24:312 Page 2 of 14 Conclusions and recommendation This study shows that burnout of operating room nurses is related to various factors, such as job stress, social support, work–family conflict, psychological capital and well-being. Therefore, it is suggested that hospital management should alleviate the burnout of operating room nurses from the multi-dimensional aspects of improving the work environment, enhancing social support and improving personal psychological capital and well-being to effectively alleviate burnout. Trial registration (PROSPERO) International prospective register of systematic reviews: CRD42024547524. Keywords Operating room, Nurse, Burnout, Meta-analysis, China Introduction Burnout is a state of physical and mental exhaustion due to chronic work stress and emotional burdens characterised by three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and decreased personal accomplishment [1, 2]. The World Health Organization included burnout in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases in 2019, indicating that burnout has become a serious health issue for nurses worldwide [1]. In a recent meta-analysis of burnout among nurses globally, the prevalence of burnout among nurses increased to approximately 11.23% [3]. In recent years, with the increasing intensity of workload in the healthcare industry, the problem of burnout has become more and more prominent, especially for the critical position of operating room nurses [4, 5], and the percentage of burnout among nurses is as high as 42.5% in the high-intensity working environment of operating rooms [6]. Burnout can have serious negative effects on both patients and nurses. It not only affects the physical and mental health of nurses but also reduces job satisfaction, increases the willingness to leave, affects the quality of care and even leads to the occurrence of adverse nursing events, which seriously affect patient safety [7–10]. Understanding the factors associated with burnout among operating room nurses facilitates early targeted interventions. Therefore, it is necessary to have a comprehensive understanding of the factors related to burnout among operating room nurses. Several studies [11–17] have explored these factors, such as psychological capital, job immersion and social support. However, based on these studies, there needs to be a more systematic reporting of factors associated with burnout among operating room nurses, and there is a lack of further quantitative analysis of these factors. Summarising the correlates of burnout among operating room nurses can provide a reliable basis for early prevention and intervention. Therefore, we systematically reviewed the factors associated with burnout among operating room nurses and performed a meta-analysis based on the Pearson correlation coefficients reported for each factor. Methods Design and search strategy This meta-analysis was conducted according to the PRISMA 2020 checklist. The study was registered in the international database PROSPERO under registration number CRD42024547524. Computerised searches were conducted on PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, CNKI, Wanfang D (...truncated)