The Relationship between Fatigue, Burnout and Patient Safety Management Activities in Clinical Nurses

This study was attempted to analyze the effect of clinical nurses’ fatigue and job burnout on the patient safety management activities, in order to provide empirical evidence for the improvement of nurses’ job their patient safety management activities. This study was carried out to 215 clinical nurses who worked at two general hospitals with more than 500 beds and two university hospitals. Study data have been collected from Feb. 2 to Mar. 31, 2015, and 205 responses were used for the statistical analysis. As a result of analysis, the fatigue of nurses had a positive correlation with the job burnout (p < 0.001), but had a negative correlation with the patient safety management activities (p < 0.001). In addition, the job burnout had a negative correlation with the patient safety management activities (p < 0.001). Therefore, both the hospital and nursing organizations should establish the program that manages the fatigue and job burnout of nurses in order to improve the patient safety, and the nurses themselves should also try to manage the fatigue and stress in order to create a safe hospital environment and culture.