The Impact of Psychological Empowerment on Job Burnout in Hospital Staff

Job burnout is a major source of healthcare human resources inefficiency with severe negative impact on patient care, physical-psychological health of staff, and healthcare costs. Psychological empowerment is a relatively new concept showing promise in boosting different aspect of human resources management. In this study, we pursued the question of whether psychological empowerment has any positive impact on hospital staff job burnout. Out of 820 staff of Mehr Hospital (Tehran), a sample of 270 staff from different job categories, including services, administrative, and health care categories was selected using stratified random sampling method. Psychological empowerment was measured using Spreitzer’s questionnaire (1995), and Maslach Burnout Inventory (2001) was used for assessing job burnout. Correlations between variables were examined using Pearson coefficient. A high level of job burnout was identified among the hospital staff. Healthcare staff showed a higher job burnout as compared with administrative and serving staff. Significant negative correlation was observed between psychological empowerment and job burnout (P < 0.05). In addition, certain dimensions of both constructs showed significant intercorrelations. The finding that psychological empowerment correlates with lower intensity and frequency of job burnout, encourage hospital managers to launch initiative for constant psychological empowerment of the staff in order to achieve higher human resources performance.