Nurse Burnout Analysis

According to Suzanne Gordon “ whether young or old, nurses are disillusioned because they believe that health care systems guided by bottom-line concerns simply don’t recognize the specificity of their work” (234). Nursing is more demanding than many other professions or occupations, due to the combination of difficult patients, exhausting schedules and arduous physical work (Gordon 235). It can take a significant emotional toll on many, hence the higher levels of burnout. Job dissatisfaction as a result of increased workloads and unreasonable demands, such as inappropriate nurse staffing levels, was cited as the number one reason that drives many experienced nurses to leave the profession (Sanford 38+). Studies have shown that such working conditions also affected the retention of new graduate nurses by leaving their first hospital jobs within two years of graduating (Sanford 38+).

The primary recommendations for resolving the issue of nursing burnout is to increase the number of qualified nursing staff in the Canadian healthcare workforce. The reason for increased turnover and huge cost issues are due to the scarcity of qualified nursing candidates. Therefore, the community outreach programs should be conducted to encourage students in choosing nursing as their profession. Furthermore, the educational organizations shall provide student loans to nursing students, so that more students could get enrolled in nursing programs or advanced their educations. However, these recommendations will require ample time for their implementation (Laschinger and Fida, 2015).

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.

Workload was described to be heavy, stressful, increase in intensity and overtime hours. As a result 25.8% consider resigning, 20.2% consider retiring and 25.6% consider leaving profession. Another problem that was observed at individual level was poor commitment to care. One of the factors that often limited nurses to provide therapeutic care was the change in nurse to patient ratio. As nurses assignments increase with the increase in the number of patients (i.e. 1 nurse to 6-8 patients) the quality of care provided decreases. Nurses’ ability to maintain safe environment became challenging. As part of caring, nurses also showed decreased amount of time spent with their patient. This eventually led to nurses being less satisfied with their current job. Self – efficacy was often low. Nurses felt that they did not have enough knowledge and skills required for professional practice (Newhouse, Hoffman, & Hairston, 2007). This often led into stressful transition and the ability to care for a patient even harder. New graduate nurses often had difficulty maintaining leadership role. They often felt that they did not have the ability to self advocate and raise their voice to be heard by others. They often feared that they would be over heard and that no one would listen to them (Mooney, 2007).

AACN Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments comprise skilled communication, true collaboration, effective decision-making, appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition and authentic leadership (AACN, 2005). These standards are in line with the work life factors identified by Lake (2002) as characteristics of effective professional nursing practice environments (effective nursing leadership, staff participation in organizational affairs, adequate staffing for quality care, support for a nursing model of patient care, and effective nurse/physician relationships) that play an important role in the quality of nurses’ working lives and patient safety (Laschinger & Leiter, 2006). Establishing and sustaining healthy work

Meta Description: Nurse burnout doesn’t occur nearly as often for nurses working in home health care as it does for those working in high-stress environments in facilities.

Due to the ever changing health care system and the reduction of resources, nursing demands are greater which has led to work related stress and ultimately nursing burnout. Nursing burnout has had a significant impact on nurses not only personally, but professionally in addition to impacting the delivery of quality care. Sadly, "we are facing an unprecedented crisis in the profession of nursing; many would be (and should be) nurses are choosing other careers, many wonderful nurses are leaving nursing, and many of the nurses who are staying in the profession are not happy" ( Todaro-Franceshi, n.d., para 3). As a nursing leader, the first step is recognizing that your staff may be potentially suffering from burnout and act upon it immediately, thereby, preventing job dissatisfaction and burnout. Literature continues to reveal that care providers, especially nurses and physicians struggle with this pervasive issue "which impacts their ability to relate to patients and focus on work in a way that avoids medical errors" ( cited by Rousell, 2016, Shandafelt et al., 2012, p. 51). The strategies in creating a positive work environment for nurses would be the

The purpose and problem statements are relevant to nursing because a poor work environment can lead to various issues such as: burnout, job disconnect, emotional and physical exhaustion, patient dissatisfaction and poor patient outcomes (Lang et al., 2012, p. 275). This is significant because they want to learn how to improve the environment to avoid nursing burnout and fatigue.

Burnout in Nursing has been an issue of concern as nursing profession has evolved over time with increasing demands that have been placed on nurses. These increased demands have been magnified during the decades where massive nursing shortages have been seen. It has also been heightened by the fact that we are now dealing with the baby boomer generation and the fact that American are living longer, but does not necessarily show that they are healthier. Longevity has been partly attributable to improved diagnosis aided by technological advancement in the treatment of disease processes that otherwise will not have been treatable. Nurses are not only dealing with keeping up with the changing faces of health care with advancing technology but

Nurses, always involved in patient care, sometimes experience detrimental effects with prolonged stress or “burnout” during their career throughout the years. Burnout is defined as an extended response to physical or emotional stressors. Some examples of these stressors are; memories of witnessing death, patient and family suffering, emotional stress of losing patients, feeling emotionally and physically drained, or emotional disconnect from staff which can all contribute to burnout. As a result, nurses can experience; exhaustion, anxiety, dissatisfaction and low capacity. Overall, burnout can have negative effects not just on the emotional and physical health of nurses but also on; patient satisfaction, outcomes and mortality of nurses and patients. Although, there are ways to reduce or prevent these negative effects of burnout from manifesting. For example, nurses can apply interventions to reduce these risks including; staff support, onsite counselors and psychiatrists for nurses and salary increases and reimbursement opportunities for nurses through clinical ladder programs. Nurses can also start by just saying no to certain requests, being aware of their tolerance level, by taking care of themselves and having fun outside of work. On the other hand, others do not think nursing burnout is fatal and nurses just need a break from their job to initiate change. Although, the issue of burnout is prevalent in nurse’s careers which need to be addressed more in society in

There is growing evidence that nurses’ experience deteriorating work conditions, with increasingly unsupportive work environments, non-family-friendly working hours and increased stress. The supervisor-nurse relationship is often the ‘buffer’ between organizational demands and professional workplace expectations. Notably, effective supervisor-nurse relationships predict high organizational commitment and wellbeing and retention. Thus, the quality of workplace relationships, especially those with supervisors, plus perceived organizational and colleague support, are argued to anchor nurses to a particular hospital and support them to stay nursing. Workplace relationships also influence nurses’ engagement; important to healthcare managers because engagement captures emotional and intellectual involvement, producing nurses who embrace their work tasks (Brunetto et al., 2013).

By recognizing that burnout is a serious problem that impacts an organization’s viability, an assembly of staff nurses, nursing supervisors, human resource staff, social services, nurse administrators, and a physician champion will be arranged to construct mission, objectives and strategies to help ameliorate the issues at hand. Researching literature on nursing burnout is essential so that the members of the task force has a solid grasp on potential underlying hardships contributing to nursing burnout within the facility as well as the financial effects on the organization. Furthermore, in order to determine a solution, the nurse’s work environment should be assessed (Nedd, 2006) and measured using the 26-item Brisbane Practice Environment Measure (B-PEM) (Flint, Farrugia, Courtney, & Webster, 2010). The B-PEM instrument was developed to measure nursing satisfaction within the work environment and the perceived facilities inadequacies (Flint et al. 2010; Hayes et al., 2014; Nedd, 2006). Next, the Conditions of Work Effectiveness - Questionnaire-II (CWEQ-II) will also be utilized to measure the nurses’ perceived access to the four job related empowerment structures: opportunity, information, support, and resources will be administered (Laschinger et al., 2003). Then nursing burnout will be assessed and analyzed by using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) which is a widely used instrument to assess burnout and is considered the gold standard due to its established

If nurses are unable to identify emotional and motivational states as they respond to positive and negative aspects of work, they may be unaware of how these factors influence their assessment of the meaningfulness of work, their professional competence, or the motivation to care. A lack of motivation on the part of individuals results in apathy, poor health and well-being, and a sense of powerlessness (Fletcher, 1999). A lack of motivation to care is likely to lead to less desirable outcomes for patients in the nurse's care. Based on research and theory the authors propose the following model of the motivation to care for professional nursing

Work engagement is defined as a pleasing sense of satisfaction, a state of wellness while at work. Nurses are engaged with stamina and enthusiasm and dedication in the implementation of tasks toward their patients. Shared governance

There has not always been a good track of how stress affects the work environment for nurses and how it contributes to burnout. “Work stress in nursing was first assessed in 1960…” (Jennings). Changing times can also contribute to burnout rates in nurses, “Since the mid-1980's…nurses’ work stress may be escalating due to the increasing use of technology, continuing rises in health care costs, and turbulence within the work environment” (Jennings). Technology has