The Complexity of Burnout Experiences among Care Aides: A Person-Oriented Approach to Burnout Patterns

Abstract

Care aides working in nursing homes experience burnout attributed to various workplace stressors. Burnout dimensions (exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy) interact to form distinct burnout patterns. Using a person-oriented approach, we aimed to identify burnout patterns among care aides and to examine their association with individual and job-related factors. This was a cross-sectional, secondary analysis of the Translating Research in Elder Care 2019–2020 survey data collected from 3765 care aides working in Canadian nursing homes. We used Maslach Burnout Inventory to assess burnout and performed latent profile analysis to identify burnout patterns, then examined their associations with other factors. We identified an engaged pattern (43.2% of the care aide sample) with low exhaustion and cynicism and high professional efficacy; an overwhelmed but accomplished pattern (38.5%) with high levels of the three dimensions; two intermediate patterns—a tired and ineffective pattern (2.4%) and a tired but effective pattern (15.8%). The engaged group reported the most favorable scores on work environment, work-life experiences, and health, whereas the tired and ineffective group reported the least favorable scores. The findings suggest complex experiences of burnout among care aides and call for tailored interventions to distinct burnout patterns.