ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1604631
This article is part of the Research TopicWorld Mental Health Day: Mental Health in the WorkplaceView all 18 articles
Understanding Burnout Among Operating Room Nurses: A Qual itative Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Anqing Municipal Hospital, Anqing, Anhui Province, China
- 2Yancheng Clinical Medical College of Jiangsu University/The First people’s Hospital of Yancheng, Yancheng, China
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Objective: This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of job burnout a mong operating room nurses and to provide an evidence-based foundation for d eveloping targeted nursing interventions to mitigate job burnout in this populati on.Method: A purposive sampling method, guided by the principle of maximum v ariation, was employed to recruit 14 operating room nurses from a tertiary Gra de A hospital in Anhui Province in January 2025. A phenomenological researc h approach was adopted, utilizing semi-structured interviews for data collection.Interview data were analyzed using Colaizzi's seven-step method. Data collecti on continued until thematic saturation was achieved-meaning no new themes emerged in subsequent interviews.Results: Eight major themes and thirteen subthemes were extracted. Among the se, five major themes were identified as factors contributing to occupational bu rnout among operating room nurses, while three major themes were related to coping strategies. Specifically, the findings indicated that occupational burnout a mong nurses was closely associated with excessive workload, insufficient emoti onal support, career development stagnation, and the high-pressure dynamics of healthcare relationships. Nurses commonly reported a lack of professional fulfi llment and an absence of effective strategies to cope with emotional exhaustion in their work.: Burnout among operating room nurses results from the interplay o f multiple factors. This study identifies key mechanisms underlying burnout in nurses working in high-pressure environments, emphasizing the importance of i mproving organizational support, optimizing nurse-physician communication, and clarifying career development pathways. These findings provide a theoretical b asis for the development of targeted nursing management strategies and interve ntions, which may effectively alleviate nurse burnout and enhance both nursing quality and team stability.
Keywords: Operating room, Nurse, Job burnout, Influencing factors, Semi-struct ured interview, Phenomenological study
Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Xiang, Jiang and Gu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Su Gu, Yancheng Clinical Medical College of Jiangsu University/The First people’s Hospital of Yancheng, Yancheng, China
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