Creating a Positive Environment Within Rehabilitation Services On a daily basis, individuals within rehabilitation care facilities are not treated with proper care. 15 years ago, a woman who will remain anonymous, was impacted by a boating accident that left her completely paralyzed, except for the ability to move her eye lids. 13 years ago a nurse came forward to testify that this same woman had been abused by doctors the entire time she was in their care. This is only one story from an Illinois hospital setting, I’ve viewed personally. Although this is a more extreme case, poor bedside manner, and even abuse, happens within the rehabilitation world too often. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the issues related to a lack of …show more content…
The risk of patients becoming further injured continues to increase while understaffing is on the rise.
In addition to understaffing, health care professionals are also placed within a setting where they are overworked. According to a research study by Imai et, al. (2004), “Excessive work demands, particularly for emergency overtime work, and low job control for community psychiatric nurses appear to represent work environment factors contributing to burnout”. When institutions are understaffed, it often means that nurses are then over worked. When this occurs, they no longer have the ability to upkeep their self-emotional and physical health. According to an article by USA Today (2015), “A steady stream of studies link fatigue to errors, increased risk-taking, declines in short-term memory and a reduced ability to learn – with researchers likening the performance of someone awake for at least 17 hours to that of a drunk person”. A common work shift currently for nurses in these settings are at least 12 hours at a time. Fatigue can also increase if workers have 12 hour shifts, for multiple days in a row. When an individual reaches this level of fatigue, it can be difficult for them to then care for another individual to the best of their abilities.
Possible Solutions Although this issue within the rehabilitation setting is becoming more common, there are various
Those of us who graduated from nursing school and started their first job were full of dreams, aspirations, and had every intention of making a difference. Now fast forward five years; these same nurses have been on their feet for 16 hours and have not had time to eat or use the bathroom since leaving their homes this morning. The call lights will not stop going off long enough for them to give report to the oncoming nurses and once again they are late for their children’s dance recitals or soccer games. They can forget about trying to squeeze a yoga class in this week. I understand what it is like to rush to your car feeling as if some important task was forgotten; was Mr. Smith’s tube feed restarted, did room 8 receive their pain medication? Nurses all over the world are experiencing “burnout”. To avoid burnout, nurses must properly care for themselves by separating work from personal life, knowing when to say no, and making time for enjoyable activities to manage stress, because we cannot provide quality patient care if we are neglecting ourselves.
West, Ahern, Byrnes and Kwanten (2007) indicate that the new graduate nurses may have not worked full-time in the past; given that graduate nurses begin their career with a full-time job can lead to exhaustion. It was discovered that shift work leads to desynchronisation of physiologically determined circadian rhythms which has a major psychobiology effect and it is commonly perceived the effects of shift work contribute to graduate nurses attrition rate. The NGNs often have a high level of stress due to disturbed sleeping patterns, as they find to adaption to shift work or rotating work hours difficult. Eventually, it leads to feelings of lack of job satisfaction, exhaustion and spending of less time with their friends and family, which can eventually could lead to burnout (West et al., 2007).
The term burnout, according to Catalano, is a continuing depletion of energy and strength combined with a loss of motivation and commitment after prolonged exposure to high occupational stress (2015). When a unit or facility is understaffed, not only do the nursing staff get burnt out, the patients also don’t receive the quality of care they deserve. Due to the increase in workload, nursing staff are more prone to making mistakes and medical errors and sometime times do not fellow facility policies. The nurse-patient ratio aspect sometimes gets overlooked at and that could lead to possible medication errors, lack of communication, falls, neglect, abuse and/or death may occur. Sometimes, it become so overwhelming people turn to leave the workforce all together. When nurses and CNA workload increase, they become frustrated and unhappy, and the desire to leave
Nurses work long hours and deal with high levels of stress during the workday which leads to nurse burnout. Nurse burnout is classified as physical and mental fatigue, which strongly affects the nurses emotions and motivation. (“Nursing Burnout”). Burnout is caused by various factors within the workplace, such as dealing with a hectic, fast-paced environment, caring for too many patients at one time, and working odd hours. When nurses deal with multiple patients per shift, high levels of responsibility, and their own personal problems, they can become exhausted and overwhelmed. Stress due to burnout can also affect the nurse’s mood in a negative way, causing the nurse to become impatient or irritable, which can oftentimes results in verbal or emotional abuse towards the
A major issue in the medical career field is the demand for nurses and this, of course, means that these nurses will be working strenuous hours to meet the high demands. While this may satisfy some issues it also creates others. Longer hours results in exhausted nurses and this leads to negative patient outcomes.
This issue is important to address because having an increased workload can have detrimental issues such as mental frustration and physical exhaustion. The conclusion of this study is that it calls for action to take place in the health care system. It is important to investigate these problems, so there can be modifications made by management to the health care systems to overall decrease the nursing shortage.
Another cause of nurse fatigue is lack of adequate sleep. First, working 12 hour shifts means that nurses only have 12 hours to sleep and also conduct other activities of life outside the workplace, while other professionals have 16 or more hours for rest and social activities. This is the reason for the few hours of sleep recorded by nurses with some opting to not sleep at all but take short naps. These are
When nurses experience fatigue due to excessive overtime, effects that can occur are reduced decision making ability, reduced communication skills, increased forgetfulness, increased tendency of risk taking, reduced ability to handle stress on the job, decreased ability to do complex planning, and inability to recall details which can all danger patients wellbeing. Unfortunately even with all the
Nurse staffing have an effect on a variety of areas within nursing. Quality of care is usually affected. Hospitals with low staffing tend to have higher incidence of poor patient outcomes. Martin, (2015) wrote an article on how insufficient nursing staff increases workload and job dissatisfaction, which in effect decreases total patient care over all. When nurse staffing is inadequate, the ability to practice ethically becomes questionable. Time worked, overtime, and total hours per week have significant effect on errors. When nurses works long hours, the more likely errors will be made. He also argued that inadequate staffing not only affects their patients but also their loved ones, future and current nursing staff, and the hospitals in which they are employed. An unrealistic workload may result in chronic fatigue, poor sleep patterns, and absenteeism thus affecting the patients they take care of.
Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning
This highly studied issue is one of great importance. A majority of the studies conducted on this topic, including the ones mentioned above, have concluded with the same grim results: understaffed hospitals result in needless patient deaths. Chapter twenty-five in the Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses provides a substantial overview of the studies that have been carried out on this topic; it reiterates the concepts of the studies, and strengthens their findings: high patient to nurse ratios result in heavier workloads, decreased job satisfaction and patient danger. Conversely, this chapter also maintains
A nurse’s typical day isn’t without stress; it is usually a lot of complex planning, critical thinking, time management, an abundance of communications with all departments of the hospital, and documenting events that have happened throughout the day on their entire patient assignment. “Nurses who are mandated following the completion of their regular shift are often ill-equipped to continue working. They have not planned for that situation with: proper advanced rest, arrangements for
Patients in a hospital and/or healthcare facilities have to be cared for all day and all night, everyday of the week by nurses. The usual way to fulfill this need is to divide up the day into three 8-hour shifts. Different shifts have been put into place to help improve nurse satisfaction, decrease the nursing shortage and save the hospital money. The 24-hour day is made up of two 12-hour shifts; 12 hours in the day and 12 hours at night. There has been quite an ongoing debate over the years regarding this issue of nurses working over 8 hours in a single day. Many people, such as hospital nursing administrators, have reason to believe that working long hour shifts causes more errors in
Stressful work environments, long work hours and inadequate sleep all contribute to an increase in physical and mental exhaustion amongst nurses. Typically, people choose nursing as a career to help others and to make a difference in their lives, without realizing the number of duties this career demands. Nurses may suffer in silence when they are experiencing stress. The effects can impact safe and reliable care by decreasing job satisfaction, decreasing productivity, causing poor personal health, and compromising patient care. Many facilities would benefit from implementing evidence-based strategies to address nurse fatigue and burnout.
The risks of making an error were significantly increased when work shifts were longer than twelve hours, when nurses worked overtime, or when they worked more than forty hours per week. (Trossman, 2009). Working longer hours in a high stress area will always increase the error rate. Designating an adequate number of RN positions to ensure nurses work an appropriate schedule without overtime and that their workload allows for breaks. Managerial staff must work to develop specific policies about the length of work times based on the setting, patient and provider needs. Those policies should limit nurses from working more than 12.5 consecutive hours. Provide education for all care providers on the hazards and causes of fatigue. Continue to document unsafe staffing conditions and work with others to change the current work culture so that it recognizes the effects of fatigue on patient safety, as well as the nurse. (Berger, et al. 2006)