Associations between perceived overqualification, transformational leadership and burnout in nurses from intensive care units: A multicentre survey

Aims To explore whether perceived overqualification increases the risk of burnout and whether transformational leadership negatively moderates this relationship. Background Perceived overqualification might contribute to burnout and lead to poor experience of transformational leadership, and transformational leadership might be associated with burnout. However, these relationships have not yet been confirmed. Methods A multicentre cross‐sectional study. A total of 321 nurses from intensive care units were recruited from six tertiary hospitals. Scale of Perceived OverQualification, Transformational Leadership Questionnaire and emotional exhaustion subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory—General Survey were employed to collect the data. Hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrap resampling were applied to analyse the data. Results Burnout was positively associated with perceived overqualification and negatively associated with transformational leadership (each p