Enfermeria intensivaAug 13, 2013

Work environment, job satisfaction, and burnout in nurses working in intensive care and regular hospital units in Spain

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Mar 22, 2026

Abstract

Critical care unit nurses reported a mean level of agreement of 2.41 for staffing adequacy compared to 2.19 in medical-surgical units.

Nurses in critical care units expressed higher satisfaction regarding staffing and resource adequacy than those in medical-surgical units.
Burnout levels were higher in medical-surgical units, with 23% of nurses experiencing high levels of burnout.
Job satisfaction was notably lower in critical care units, with 70% reporting they were very or strongly satisfied.
Overall, nurses in critical care units had a more unfavorable opinion of their work environment compared to their counterparts in medical-surgical units.

Simplified

OBJECTIVE: To know if there are differences between the critical care units and the medical-surgical care units regarding the perception of the nurses working in National Health System hospitals about their work environment, burnout level and job satisfaction.

METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 6,417 nurses from the medical-surgical care units and with 1,122 nurses from critical care units of 59 Spanish hospitals with more than 150 beds. Socio-demographic, job satisfaction, perception of work environment (Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index [PES-NWI questionnaire]) and burnout measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) data were collected.

RESULTS: The PES-NWI showed differences in 4 out of its 5 factors. It showed better values in medical-surgical units in all the factors, except for Staffing and resource adequacy (P<.001), where critical care units showed a mean level of agreement of 2.41 versus 2.19 for the medical-surgical units. Regarding burnout, this was higher in the medical-surgical care units (P=.039) where 23% (952) of the nurses had high levels. Job satisfaction was lower in the critical care units (P=.044) with 70% (578) of nurses being very or strongly satisfied.

CONCLUSIONS: The opinion of the nurses, working in critical care units about their hospital is unfavorable. They showed lower levels of burnout than those working in medical-surgical units.

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Work environment, job satisfaction, and burnout in nurses working in intensive care and regular hospital units in Spain

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