Relationship between Job Burnout with Alexithymia among Nurses

Job burnout and dyslexia can be risk factors among nurses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between job burnout with alexithymia in nurses who work in hospitals affiliated with the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences.

This is a descriptive-correlation study. The samples included 311 nurses working in hospitals affiliated with the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, who were included in the study through the quota sampling method. The data collection tool consisted of a two-part questionnaire. The first part was related to demographic information and the second part was related to the 20-item Toronto Bagby et al.'s (1994) alexithymia evaluation questionnaire and the 22-item job burnout questionnaire by Meslach et al. (1993). Data were statistically analyzed using SPSS version 22 software and through Pearson's correlation analysis, independent t, one-way analysis of variance, one-way linear regression, and Sheffe's post hoc test.

The results showed that alexithymia and job burnout were respectively 82.1(SD=2.05) and 119.4 (SD=6.95) and two of these variables were significantly correlated (r=0.57, p=0.001). Findings showed that alexithymia (33%) explains nurses' job burnout changes.

In general, it can be stated that the higher the level of emotional illiteracy in a person (i.e., the person is weak in describing and recognizing their feelings and emotions and having low objective thinking), the more they will develop burnout syndrome. Therefore, proper planning for the identification of nurses’ emotional status as well as burnout and its related factors and educational interventions about emotional management and prevention of job burnout is needed.