Social support and emotional exhaustion among hospital nursing staff

Abstract

The role of three sources of social support (family as kin, co-workers as\n\t\t\t\t insiders, and supervisors as outsiders) on the emotional exhaustion were analyzed in a\n\t\t\t\t sample of 210 nurses at a general hospital in Seville, a city in the south of Spain. They\n\t\t\t\t were given an adaptation of the Nursing Stress Scale, (Gray-Toff & Anderson 1981), the\n\t\t\t\t Multidimensional Support Scale (Winefield, Winefield, Tiggemann 1992), previously\n\t\t\t\t adapted in a sample of nurses and the emotional exhaustion scale of the Spanish version of\n\t\t\t\t Maslach’s Burnout Inventory (1997). After applying a hierarchical multiple regression\n\t\t\t\t analysis to the data, the results confirm the main effect of the three sources and the buffering\n\t\t\t\t effect in the case of outsiders and kin. It suggests the need to perform studies with\n\t\t\t\t wider samples, which allow the analysis of professionals’ psychosocial characteristics and\n\t\t\t\t types of support, as well as demands in nursing job tasks.