Nurse burnout and the commission of errors are two seemingly unrelated phenomena in the health care arena. Burnout was first described by Herbert J. Freudenberger in 1974 and has since been studied in many industries, including nursing. The issue of errors in health care has been a growing concern since the Institute of Medicine published the report, To Err is Human in 1999. Little research has been done to link burnout and the commission of errors. A literature review was performed to investigate these two issues. Peer-reviewed research articles were analyzed for contributing factors and effects on patient outcomes. The findings of the literature suggest that burnout and the commission of errors have many similar contributing factors, particularly in regards to work environment conditions. The conclusion from this literature review is that more research should be done to correlate burnout and error commission and that efforts should be made to improve the work environment of nurses.