Rrlationship between nurses burnout level and medical error tendenci̇es during the COVID-19 pandemic

Nursing, one of the important professions of the health sector in the fight against the Covid-19 virus, is among the professions where the risk of burnout is high for reasons such as long working hours, heavy workload, heavy emotional burden and stress. Increasing burnout increases the likelihood of medical errors of nurses. This research was carried out descriptively in order to determine the effects of burnout levels of nurses on their tendency to medical error during the Covid-19 pandemic period. The research was carried out on 303 nurses working in hospitals in Istanbul in December 2020 – August 2021. The data of the study were collected using the "Demographic Characteristics Form", "Occupational Fatigue Burnout Recovery Scale" and "Tendency to Medical Error in Nurses Scale" by online method. It was found that the Burnout scale of nurses was 69.95±28.36 for the "chronic fatigue" sub-dimension, 67.27±18.86 for the "acute fatigue" sub-dimension, 39.69±17.63 for the "recovery" sub-dimension, and the total score average for the Medical error tendency scale was 216.64±28.32. A low level of positive correlation was found between all sub-dimensions of the medical error tendency scale and the acute and chronic fatigue sub-dimension, and a low level of negative correlation was found between the recovery sub-dimension. The level of burnout is higher in young nurses, women, those who do not have children, those who work in intensive care, shift workers, those who work more than 48 hours a week, and those who care for a Covid (+) patient. The tendency of nurses to medical error is affected by the unit where they work, the working hours and the increase in smoking and alcohol use. As a result, nurses' tendency to medical error increases as burnout levels increase. Key Words: covid-19, burnout, medical error, nurse