Background: Burnout is a state of mental health characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal achievement. Psychiatric nurses are the most susceptible to burnout and are affected. Therefore, it was of great significance to study the burnout level of psychiatric nurses to improve the nursing quality of psychiatric nurses.

Aim: The aim of the study is to describe the level of occupational burnout among psychiatric nurses in Lishui.

Methods: A total of 138 psychiatric nurses from a third-level grade hospital in Lishui submitted a questionnaire. Their level of occupational burnout was measured by the Chinese version of ‘Maslach Burnout Inventory’.  

Results: Out of 138 respondents, 125 responded to the survey, of which 105 were valid. According to the data analysis of the survey results, in Emotional exhaustion, the respondents were all at the level of mild to moderate burnout, there were 98.1% respondents，only 2 participants reported with high levels of burnout. In Depersonalization , all the respondents were at the level of mild to moderate burnout, 96.2% with mild burnout and 3.8% with moderate burnout. In Personal achievement , the number of participants with high and low personal sense of achievement was almost the same, 17.1% and 18.1% respectively, 64.8% of them were at the level of moderate burnout.

Conclusions: Burnout was common among psychiatric nurses in this study. It was related to the special and busy environment of work. To improve the situation, it was essential to take timely preventive measures. Reduced the workload, increased work enthusiasm and reasonable use of physical and mental relaxation activity was a way to alleviate such emotional exhaustion.