Nurse Burnout in High Acuity Settings and Organizational Interventions: A Scoping Review

<strong>Background &amp; Purpose</strong>: Nurse burnout is a significant and prevalent issue in healthcare especially in high-acuity settings such as emergency departments (ED) and intensive care units (ICU). Burnout has been shown to negatively impact nurses&rsquo; mental health, turnover rates, job satisfaction and patient outcomes. Interventions that focus on individual growth such as building resilience and improving self-care have shown limited effectiveness in decreasing burnout in nurses. The purpose of this scoping review is to explore whether organizational interventions are mitigating nurse burnout in the ED and ICU.&nbsp;<br /><strong>Materials &amp; Methods</strong>: A scoping review was used to examine recent literature on organizational interventions that focus on improving burnout rates in nurses in the ED and ICU. PubMed, CINAHL, and SCOPUS were the databases primarily used to search keywords relating to nursing, burnout, interventions, emergency department, and critical care. Inclusion criteria consisted of nurses, high-acuity settings such as ED and ICU, organizational interventions, and publication within the last five years. Nine studies were chosen and analyzed for this research.&nbsp;<br /><strong>Conclusion</strong>: The results from the nine studies illustrated how organizational interventions compared to individual interventions are more effective whether nurses themselves engaged in personal self-care. Some of the interventions cited in the literature were: improving staffing ratios, enhancing the supportive nature of the care delivery environments, providing leadership opportunities, balancing work distribution, and supporting effective team collaboration. Based on these studies, the organizational interventions cited led to decreased burnout rates and better patient outcomes.&nbsp;