Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
2-15-2026
First Advisor
Lisa Drake
Second Advisor
Paige Wimberley
Abstract
Nursing faculty burnout is a national concern supported by literature, which compromises faculty well-being, creativity, retention, and sustainability of nursing programs. Burnout is characterized by the subscales of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of reduced personal accomplishment. At the project site, leaders reported that faculty often left their roles due to increased workload and being overwhelmed by the rigorous expectations of the role, underscoring the need for a process to support nursing faculty burnout. This quality improvement (QI) project aimed to evaluate the impact of evidence-based self-care practices on nursing faculty burnout using Maslach's Burnout Inventory Toolkit, a valid and reliable tool. A pretest-posttest design was used, guided by Laura Polk’s Theory of Resiliency, Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Model, and the Plan-Do-Study-Act framework. Eleven nursing faculty from a community college in Texas participated in the intervention, which included a comprehensive, self-care physical activity strategy with dedicated time for faculty to use exercise equipment, trainers, and yoga classes. Participants accessed a classroom containing lectures and strategies for support. Descriptive and inferential statistics, paired-samples t-test using an alpha value of 0.05, and Cohen’s d were analyzed using Intellectus Statistics. Emotional exhaustion decreased 51.2% (M = 29.82 to 14.55, p =.032, d= 0.7), while Depersonalization decreased 69.7% (M= 9.91 to 3.00, p= .020, d= 0.84), noting statistical and clinical significance in both areas. Personal Accomplishment scores increased (M = 32.45 to 40.18, p= .099, d=0.55), suggesting meaningful impact, but not statistical significance based on the alpha value of .05. This QI project offers an evidence-based, standardized, and sustainable framework of support for nursing faculty burnout at the project site and is a replicable model for nursing academia.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Boyd, Lori, "Quality Improvement Project: Impact of Evidence-Based Self-Care Practice on Burnout in Nursing Faculty" (2026). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 286.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/286
