Nurses who co-create care with clients experience lower levels of burnout through the perception of fewer emotional demands: an observational study.

Background: Clients are especially satisfied about treatment of nurses providing person-centered care. Such care benefits from the co-creation of care, in which nurses and clients together shape the care process by investing in effective communication and supportive nurse-client relationships. Co-creation of care can especially benefit longitudinal collaboration between clients and their nurses in long-term care settings. However, it is unknown how nurses in these settings perceive the co-creation of care to affect their job demands, and ultimately, their levels of job burnout. We studied whether nurses' perceptions of job demands (workload and emotional demands) mediated the association between the co-creation of care and job burnout in long-term care settings.

Methods: A web-based survey was completed by 256 nurses from two long-term care facilities in the Netherlands. Nurses were sent an email that included information about the study and a link to the web-based survey, consisting of items from validated questionnaires on the co-creation of care, job demands, and job burnout. Resulting data were analyzed using mediation analyses.

Results: The co-creation of care was associated with lower levels of burnout through the perception of fewer emotional demands (ß = -0.07; 95% percentile bootstrap confidence interval (PBCI) -0.12 to -0.02). Workload was also associated with lower burnout levels, but workload did not mediate the association between the co-creation of care and job burnout (ß = -0.01; 95% PBCI -0.07 to 0.05).

Conclusions: The co-creation of care supports nurses' perception of their work in long-term care as less emotionally demanding, which helps them to experience less burnout. Thus, long-term care facilities could consider the promotion of the co-creation of care in efforts to reduce emotional demands and job burnout among nurses. Ultimately, investing in the co-creation of care can facilitate well-being of nurses as well as facilitate their person-centeredness in caring for their clients.