The Association Between Burnout, and Depressive Symptoms in a Turkish Military Nurse Sample

Objective: This study aims to investigate the association between the burnout syndrome and depressive symptoms among Turkish military nurses. Methods: The study was conducted among Turkish military nurses in Ankara during April 2007. From a total of 490 Nurses, 377 (76.9%) were included in the study. The participants completed a self structured questionnaire, Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The continuous variables were compared using the student t-test or ANOVA. Results: The mean age of participants was 29.7 +/- 5.4. Cronbach alpha values were 0.87, 0.71, and 0.83 for emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and reversed reduced personal accomplishment (RPA) respectively, and was 0.93 for BDI. BDI mean score was correlated significantly with MBI mean score and mean scores of its all subscales. Of the all items of BDI, while the scores of 18 items were correlated significantly with MBI mean score and mean scores of its all subscales, the scores of remaining 3 items namely weight loss, loss of appetite, and irritability were not. Nurses at age 30 or more and nurses with chronic disease had higher depressive scores. Conclusions: Based on our results a strong correlation exists between depressive symptoms and all components of burnout syndrome. This study also demonstrated that the burnout syndrome and depression are not identical, while depressive symptoms include physiological involvement like weight loss and loss of appetite, burnout syndrome does not.