Introduction: Health workers are one of the professional groups that experience higher levels of work stress and its negative consequences and within these is the nursing staff. The professional practice of nursing is usually demanding, with associated risk factors facing patients with different levels of complexity in terms of their basic pathology, psychological and emotional complications and social problems. These factors can cause psychological and physical symptoms, absenteeism, resignation of personnel and errors in the performance of the nursing staff. General objective: to describe the risk factors and preventive measures of Burnout syndrome (SBO) in nursing professionals. Materials and methods: A search was made of studies published in scientific journals between 2013 and 2017. The databases consulted were PubMed, Science Direct, Scielo and Cochrane Library. The search terms were Burnout Syndrome AND nurse and the English and Spanish languages. 31 articles entered the review. Results: Burnout syndrome affects nurses very frequently, especially in those areas where there is greater exposure to stressful situations such as where high complexity patients are handled and that added to other factors such as personality traits, marital status, Poor family support, level of study and knowledge, lead to an increased likelihood of the onset of this syndrome. Conclusion: Burnout syndrome is still a global health problem in nurses who work in areas of high stress levels, hence the importance of emphasizing preventive measures to reduce the likelihood of their appearance.
