Keywords
debriefing, stress, critical incident, pediatric intensive care, nursing, burnout, burnout p/c
Abstract
Burnout is prevalent among pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) nurses, impacting between 42-77% of them. High emotional burden, physical demand, and cognitive overload contribute to significant PICU nurse burnout prevalence. Burnout is linked to increased job turnover, compromised patient care, and decreased staff mental well-being. Addressing burnout is crucial to ensure patient safety and maintain care quality. Burnout in adult ICU nurses is well documented but less so with PICU nurses, and they face stressors unique to their setting, such as a vulnerable patient population and unique dynamics with families and providers. This scoping review includes 9 articles examining the use of post-incident stress debriefings as an emotional intervention to address burnout in PICU nurses. They included five pre-post intervention quality improvement studies, two descriptive survey studies, one cross-sectional study, and one case study. Evidence quality was evaluated using the Polit-Beck Evidence Hierarchy/Level of Evidence Scale for Therapy Questions. Post-incident stress debriefings were found to alleviate at least one of three burnout experiences, exhaustion, job dissatisfaction, and reduced professional and personal efficacy, in all nine articles. Debriefings were shown to improve compassion satisfaction and resilience among nurses, though variations in implementation and survey timing may have influenced results. Utilizing standardized burnout measures would provide better insight into the effectiveness of debriefings.
Thesis Completion Year
2025
Thesis Completion Semester
Spring
Thesis Chair
Peach, Brian
College
College of Nursing
Thesis Discipline
Nursing
Language
English
Access Status
Open Access
Length of Campus Access
None
Campus Location
Orlando (Main) Campus
STARS Citation
Monize, Sulah Emilie, "Post-Incident Debriefings For Pediatric Intensive Care Nurse Burnout A Scoping Review" (2025). Honors Undergraduate Theses. 332.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hut2024/332
Rights Statement
