Behind the Frontline: Linking Language Use to Mental Health Outcomes in ICU Nurses Working During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Open Access
- Author:
- Minnear, Haley
- Area of Honors:
- Nursing
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Ying-Ling Jao, Thesis Supervisor
Ying-Ling Jao, Thesis Honors Advisor
Diane E Berish, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- COVID-19 pandemic
nurse burnout
ICU nurses
mental health outcomes
linguistic inquiry and word count - Abstract:
- Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of extreme challenge for the healthcare field and particularly difficult for ICU nurses, whose mental health has declined as a result of increased stress. It is important to recognize nurse burnout early on and intervene promptly to establish safer working conditions, increase job satisfaction and staff retention, as well as improve the mental health outcomes of nurses. Text analysis has been established as a useful tool in understanding psychological states. Methods: This is a correlational study that examined the associations between emotion language use and levels of burnout in ICU nurses who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey was administered to surgical ICU (SICU) nurses at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. The short version of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT-12) assessed current levels of work-related burnout, four open-ended prompts aimed to elicit emotional responses about working during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the BAT-12 was re-administered to assess levels of work-related burnout from March to December 2020. Pearson correlations were used to analyze the associations between emotion language use and levels of burnout. Results: Twenty-five ICU nurses completed this study and were included for data analysis. Text analysis revealed that a mean of 6.9% of the words used in the open-ended responses were categorized as emotion language, 0.8% of words were positive emotion language, and 5.1% were negative emotion language. Participants’ average current burnout was 2.61 (range = 1.50 – 4.00) per BAT-12 and recall burnout level was 2.93 (range = 1.42 – 4.83) per BAT-12. Correlational analyses revealed that total emotion language (r = 0.439, p = 0.028) and negative emotion language (r = 0.490, p = 0.013) correlated positively with higher levels of recall burnout. Discussion: ICU nurses recalled experiencing higher levels of burnout from March to December 2020 than they currently experience at work. Participants who used more emotion language to describe their experiences recalled higher levels of burnout from March to December 2020 than those who used less of such language. This study offers a new direction for researching the experiences of nurses working during COVID-19 pandemic and highlights the importance of promoting the mental health of nurses in order to prevent nurse burnout.