Alexithymia in nurses and its relationship with burnout, anger, and somatization

Özet

Objectives: The aim of the study was to evaluate the alexithymia levels of nurses and the relationship between alex-ithymia and burnout, anger, and somatization.Methods: This correlational descriptive study was conducted with 339 nurses working in four training research hospi-tals between February 3 and 28, 2014. Data were collected using the Demographic Questionnaire, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Maslach Burnout Inventory, State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory, and SCl-90 somatization subscale. The analy-sis of the data was performed using descriptive statistics, the Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Spearman's correlation. Results: The mean age of the nurses participating in the research was 30.8±7.3, 91.2% were female, and 28.6% (n=97) had moderate alexithymia. The alexithymic nurses had higher burnout (p<0.05), anger (p<0.01), and somatization (p<0.01) scores than those who did not exhibit alexithymia. A positive weak relationship was found between the alex-ithymia scores and burnout (r=0.18; p<0.01), anger (r=0.34; p<0.01), and somatization (r=0.32; p<0.01) scores. Conclusion: The findings of the study showed that the level of alexithymia in nurses was high and the level of burnout, anger, and somatization increased as the alexithymia score increased.