Pappas, Cunningham call for refocusing burnout research

“It's time to refocus our burnout research not just on awareness that the problem exists, but rather on solutions,” asserted AONL members Sharon Pappas, PhD, RN, and Tim Cunningham, DrPH, RN, in a viewpoint in the May issue of the American Journal of Nursing. They specifically recommended a moratorium on funding cross-sectional studies alone so support can be channeled to research on implementation research and longitudinal studies of ways to mitigate burnout. They also called for increasing research into the systems factors that mitigate burnout, such as work hours, team nursing and work environments.