The Relationship between Burnout and Turnover Intention among Nurses: The Effect of Psychological Demands, Decision Authority, and Social Support on Burnout and Turnover Intention

Nursing is among the most stressful jobs in the modern healthcare system. The emotional pressure, the insufficiency of health units, the qualification of personnel, relations with co-workers and supervisors, autonomy, relatively longer, and more active working hours, and their potential responsibilities are some of the causes of burnout in certain times and environments during the career of a nurse. Unfortunately, there has been limited number of studies in Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) indicating work related problems of nurses. It is apparent that the number of hospitals and the sufficiency of healthcare units are not satisfactory in TRNC in comparison to those in developed countries. Therefore, there is an absolute need for scientific investigations investigate for nursing problems particularly in relation to burnout and turnover intention. The aim of this study was to investigate whether psychological demands, decision authority, and social support explain registered nurses’ burnout level and examine the relationship between nurses’ burnout levels and turnover intention.We have also targeted to answer several key points mainly the extension of both demographic factors and some potential sources (i.e., psychological demands, decision authority, and social support) of burnout on the explanation of nurses’ burnout level and turnover intention. Furthermore, the presence of any relationship between nurses’ burnout level and their turnover intention was also studied. In order to find answers to these questions, four regional state hospitals were visited and a total of 183 out of 256 nurses have participated in this research. Accordingly, our results indicated that psychological demands, decision authority, and social support have been found to be the most critical parameters for burnout, whereas social support have been shown to be significant for the turnover intention of nurses. From this point of view, our results have strong implications on the current status of nurses working for state hospitals. Keywords:Burnout, Turnover intention, Demands, Decision authority, Social support