International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Article Factors Related to Nurses’ Burnout during the First Wave of Coronavirus Disease-19 in a University Hospital in Italy Francesco Bellanti 1 , Aurelio Lo Buglio 1 , Erika Capuano 1 , Michal Dobrakowski 2 , Aleksandra Kasperczyk 2 , Slawomir Kasperczyk 2 , Antonio Ventriglio 3, * and Gianluigi Vendemiale 1   Citation: Bellanti, F.; Lo Buglio, A.; Capuano, E.; Dobrakowski, M.; Kasperczyk, A.; Kasperczyk, S.; Ventriglio, A.; Vendemiale, G. Factors Related to Nurses’ Burnout during the First Wave of Coronavirus Disease-19 in a University Hospital in Italy. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 5051. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/ijerph18105051 Academic Editors: Pasquale Caponnetto and Giulio Arcangeli Received: 6 March 2021 Accepted: 6 May 2021 Published: 11 May 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Foggia, Viale Pinto 1, 71122 Foggia, Italy; francesco.bellanti@unifg.it (F.B.); aurelio.lobuglio@unifg.it (A.L.B.); erika_capuano.556671@unifg.it (E.C.); gianluigi.vendemiale@unifg.it (G.V.) 2 Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medical Sciences in Zabrze, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Jordana 19, 41-808 Zabrze, Poland; michal.dobrakowski@poczta.fm (M.D.); olakasp@poczta.onet.pl (A.K.); kaslav@mp.pl (S.K.) 3 Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Foggia, Viale Pinto 1, 71122 Foggia, Italy * Correspondence: a.ventriglio@libero.it; Tel.: +39-0881-733-840 Abstract: Safety of healthcare workers in hospitals is a major concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being exposed for several working hours per day to infected patients, nurses dealing with COVID-19 face several issues that lead to physical/psychological breakdown. This study focused on burnout and its associated factors in nurses working in an Italian University Hospital during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. We designed a web-based cross-sectional study addressed to nurses working at the University Hospital in Foggia, Italy. The online questionnaire was organized in sections aimed at collecting demographic and occupational variables, including the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI). Two hundred and ninety-three nurses agreed to participate. According to MBI, we reported moderate/high emotional exhaustion in 76.5%, depersonalization in 50.2%, and personal gratification in 54.6% of participants. COVID-19-related burnout measured by OBI resulted medium/high in 89.1% of participants. Among demographic and occupational factors, a multivariate regression analysis identified emotional support, consideration of leaving job, and workload as predictive of burnout in nurses. In conclusion, this study suggests that the improvement of employer and family support to nurses, as well as reduction of workload and job-related stress, would contribute to reducing burnout in nurses during COVID-19 pandemics. Keywords: Coronavirus disease-19; burnout; nurses 1. Introduction Declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) defines a spectrum of conditions sustained by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ranging from mild disease to severe pneumonia [1,2]. To date, there have been 115,653,459 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,571,823 deaths, reported to the WHO [3]. Italy was the first European country to be hit hard by the COVID-19 and one of the European countries registering a high number of excess deaths during the first wave of the pandemic [4]. The safety of healthcare workers in hospitals is a major concern during the COVID-19 outbreak, since more than 124,000 infections were registered by the end of March 2020 [5]. With respect to other health professionals, nurses are exposed for several working hours per day to infected patients, presenting with a higher risk of contracting the infection [6]. Hence, nurses dealing with COVID-19 are exposed to increased psychological and physical pressure, as already described in previous epidemics [7,8]. Indeed, during a pandemic, nurses experience worries about their own health, and the health of their colleagues and family [9]. Furthermore, in the context of a pandemic, nurses face several issues Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 5051. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105051 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph