Abstract

Objective: to determine the influence of the spirituality level on the Academic Burnout Syndrome (ABS) in Nursing students from all academic years during times of pandemic. Method: a descriptive cross-sectional study in Nursing students from a public university in Chile. The tools used were a first questionnaire with sociodemographic information, the “Maslach Burnout Inventory Students Survey (MBI-SS)” questionnaire, and the “SQ Spirituality Questionnaire” by Parsian andDunning, validated for Chile. The Kruskal-Wallis test, the Games-Howell post-hoc test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were used for statistical analysis. Results: the study included 199 students (83.4% were female). Statistically significant positive correlations (p= 0,000) were observed between spiritual practices and personal fulfilment (r= .364), and also with the overall ABS: r= .342). Post-hoc analyses showed that 2nd year students obtained a higher score for Overall Spirituality (Median, Mdn=70) than 3rd year students (Mdn= 52) (p= .094); for the Depersonalisation dimension, 5th year students obtained a higher score (Mdn= 9) than 3rd year students (Mdn= 5) (p= .008); for Emotional Exhaustion, 5th year students presented lower scores (Mdn= 20) than 1st year students (Mdn= 24) (p=.011), as well as than 2nd year students (Mdn= 30) (p= .018). Conclusions: there were correlations between the Spirituality and ABS dimensions, even though not conclusive. The 5th year students presented higher ABS scores than previous academic years, although their emotional exhaustion was lower. Moreover, higher academic years presented lower Spirituality scores. © 2023 DAE Editorial, Grupo Paradigma. All rights reserved.