In: Nursing Issues: Psychiatric Nursing, Geriatric Nursing… ISBN: 978-1-60741-598-5 Editor: Caitriona D. McLaughlin, et al. © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Chapter 8 Nursing Burnout in the Era of Evidence Based Practice 1 Stefanos Mantzoukas and 2 Mary Gouva 1 Assistant Professor in Nursing, Department of Nursing, Highest Technological Educational Institute of Epirus, GREECE. 2 Assistant Professor in Mental Health Nursing, Department of Nursing, Highest Technological Educational Institute of Epirus, GREECE. Abstarct Superimposed organizational demands, work overload and limited decision-making capacities are often associated with the development of occupational stress by nurses that eventually create a sensation of professional burnout. In the current era of evidence-based practice, health organizations and regulatory bodies impose further demands on practicing nurses as to implement research evidence in practice setting. Also, evidence-based practice requires that nurses search the electronic literature as to find the best available evidence for practice. Lastly, in accordance to the traditional view of evidence-based practice, decisions relating to patient care are not the product of the practitioners’ intellect, but the result of research findings deriving from randomized control trials that the practicing nurses merely implement. This traditional view of evidence based practice appears to create further organizational demands, work overload and limited decision- making potentials for practicing nurses that is bound to intensify the burnout feelings. Therefore, the current chapter will conclude that the traditional view on evidence-based practice needs to be abandoned as to avoid the perpetuation of burnout sensations in nurses. A more radical view will be proposed that conceptualizes evidence-based practice as an ideology of individual emancipation, where daily practice is based on the individual nurse’s critical and reflexive analysis of singular situations and contexts taking into consideration the feasibility, appropriateness, meaningfulness and effectiveness of all types of evidence and developing a line of thought that has logical validity and argumentative coherence. This radical view will empower individual practitioners and enable them to undertake rational decisions based on the various types of knowledge that they possess leading to a notion of ownership of nursing praxis and a sense of