Stress, burnout, and low self-efficacy of nursing professionals: A qualitative inquiry

Abstract

Nursing professionals face a high level of stress and burnout due to overloaded responsibilities, which may cause a low level of self-efficacy. From the perspective of nursing professionals, the research aims to understand what are the sources of stress and burnout which would reduce the self-efficacy and the unbalanced patient ratio and how would nursing professionals describe their experiences, sources of stress and burnout, and self-efficacy. Based on the snowball sampling strategy, 60 nursing professionals were invited for qualitative research data collection. Based on the lens of the self-efficacy approach, the results indicated that the environmental factors, including workplace bullying, family stress, misunderstanding of public members, and personal development and career enhancement took important roles in increasing their stress and burnout and in reducing their self-efficacy. The outcomes of this study discovered the social status and discrimination toward nursing professionals. Government leaders, policymakers, and researchers should take this research as an opportunity to reform their policy for human resource management and education for the respectfulness of medical and nursing professionals in the public health system.