Age as a Risk Factor for Burnout Syndrome in Nursing Professionals: A Meta-Analytic Study Gómez Urquiza, Jose Luis Vargas, Cristina Fuente Solana, Emilia I. De La Fernández Castillo, Rafael Cañadas De La Fuente, Guillermo Arturo Meta-analysis Nursing Occupational health Professional burnout This work was funded by the Excellence Research Project P11HUM-7771 (Junta de Andalucía-Spain) and the Research Project mP_BS_6 (CEI BioTic Granada and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Spain). This study is part of the first author's doctoral dissertation in psychology at the University of Granada. Although past research has highlighted the possibility of a direct relationship between the age of nursing professionals and burnout syndrome, results have been far from conclusive. The aim of this study was to conduct a wider analysis of the influence of age on the three dimensions of burnout syndrome (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment) in nurses. We performed a meta-analysis of 51 publications extracted from health sciences and psychology databases that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. There were 47 reports of information on emotional exhaustion in 50 samples, 39 reports on depersonalization for 42 samples, and 31 reports on personal accomplishment in 34 samples. The mean effect sizes indicated that younger age was a significant factor in the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of nurses, although it was somewhat less influential in the dimension of personal accomplishment. Because of heterogeneity in the effect sizes, moderating variables that might explain the association between age and burnout were also analyzed. Gender, marital status, and study characteristics moderated the relationship between age and burnout and may be crucial for the identification of high-risk groups. More research is needed on other variables for which there were only a small number of studies. Identification of burnout risk factors will facilitate establishment of burnout prevention programs for nurses. 2024-05-16T06:33:45Z 2024-05-16T06:33:45Z 2017-04-01 journal article Gómez-Urquiza JL, Vargas C, De la Fuente EI, Fernández-Castillo R, Cañadas-De la Fuente GA. Age as a Risk Factor for Burnout Syndrome in Nursing Professionals: A Meta-Analytic Study. Res Nurs Health. 2017 Apr;40(2):99-110. DOI: 10.1002/nur.21774 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/91835 10.1002/nur.21774 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ open access Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Wiley