The aim of the study was to identify the features of the relationship between psychological defense mechanisms and emotional burnout in nurses with different lengths of professional experience. The study involved 570 nurses working in inpatient departments of city clinical hospitals. Two form methods were used: the method of V. V. Boyko «Emotional Burnout» and the method of «Lifestyle Index» by L. I. Wasserman. It was revealed that nurses in stressful and crisis situations often use the mechanisms of denial intellectualization and reactive education. In the group of nurses without signs of emotional burnout syndrome which made up 50 of the total research sample a balance of all psychological defense mechanisms and the absence of their relationships with the symptoms of the phases of emotional burnout were found. In the group of nurses at the stage of developing emotional burnout positive relationships were found between the indicators of the severity of its symptoms and such destructive psychological defenses as repression and regression and negative ones — reactive formation. Nurses with pronounced signs of emotional burnout are characterized by a decrease in the frequency of using all psychological defense mechanisms their imbalance and the presence of negative relationships with the symptoms of emotional burnout. It is concluded that when organizing preventive measures it is necessary to take into account the fact of the temporary positive impact of psychological defense mechanisms on the psychoemotional states of nurses and their subsequent destructive influence manifested in the emergence and development of emotional burnout syndrome.

psychological defense mechanisms, general tension of defenses, emotional burnout, tension, resistance, exhaustion, nurses.