Changes of Job Burnout in Chinese Nurses over 2004–2013: Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis

How nurse burnout changes over time with macro environmental factors remains unclear. The main purpose of this study is to investigate how burnout changes over 2004–2013 in Chinese nurses and its relationship with national-level patient-to-nurse ratio using cross-temporal meta-analysis. The results show that the mean scores of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization are positively related to the year of data collection, while that of personal accomplishment are negatively related to the year of data collection, indicating that burnout increases steadily over the recent years in Chinese nurses. National-level patient-to-nurse ratio may be a risk factor for the observed increase in nurse burnout over 2004–2013, and nurse staffing provided may be inadequate to meet the increasing demands of patients for high-quality medical care service in China. Thus, increasing the number and quality of nurses may hold promise for reducing nurse burnout on a national level.