Nurse Burnout Essay

Depression happens when someone has extreme feeling of hopelessness and sadness. Signs of depression include lack of one’s self worth, happiness, Indicators of depression include lack of self-worth, determination, feelings of failure. Nurses experience depression because of the roles they play in

These things are not taught in nursing school. I think new nurses should be exposed to burnout as a topic. I believe students and nurses should find several healthy ways to manage stress and make those commitments to themselves. My job has resources to all nurses and I have used some of them. A few stress management techniques that have worked for me is exercise, eating healthy, and reading. As far as mindfulness techniques, being aware of the space oneself is in or body scans, which I have practice in my Nurse Graduate Program. Any of these techniques can help with the prevention of burnout. I seem to respond better to exercise than a meditation technique. It took trying all to figure it

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.

Staff nurses have great responsibilities in caring for patients. Often, these nurses experience heavy workload. Heavy patient load and stress contributes to burnout. Why is burnout important to discuss in relation to nurses? Burnout affects the performance of the nurse and the quality of care he or she provides to the patient. Therefore, it is imperative that staff nurses decrease the possibility of burnout and increase or maintain excitement and enjoyment in the field of nursing. If nurses do so, they will find joy in their work and quality of patient care will be increased. Contributors to burnout and

A number of emotions were felt during this experience, in regards to transitioning from a student nurse to the registered nurse role. Primarily, the transition in role from student nurse to registered nurse was similar to any clinical experience I have had at Midlands Technical College. I was placed in a medical-surgical rotation. I felt slighted that not only were we required to complete a data tool but we also participated in the teamwork model demonstrated in prior semesters. Personally, I did not feel a transition during this particular clinical experience.

This article researched the competency of new graduate nurses. “Nursing competence is not only a professional standard

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).

Those who were being interviewed were able to choose their setting. One of the researcher’s findings through the interviews were the top three themes that emerged when participants were asked the decision of why they left: (1) unfriendly workplace, (2) emotional distress related to patient care, and (3) fatigue and exhaustion. The conclusion of the study directly tries to relate to the nursing shortage; how hospitals must find a way to retain experienced nursing staff, and should recognize when their colleagues are appearing distressed or socially isolated. Knowing the reasons of why nurses leave clinical practice will benefit the nurses, patients, family, and most importantly, improve the quality of care.

Burnout is a gradual onset with symptoms coming on over time slowly. Burnout symptoms may include physical exhaustion, hopelessness, negative self-concept, having difficulty leaving home, and inability to concentrate are just some of the symptoms. Due to the gradual onset of symptoms, it is often hard to detect early (Dass-Brailsford, 2007). In McCann and Pearlman’s article they discuss burnout as a, “psychological strain from working with difficult populations” (McCann & Pearlman, 1990).

Fatigue is defined as a feeling of tiredness or exhaustion or a need to rest because of lack of energy or strength. Fatigue in nurses directly affects the quality of care that the nurse gives to a patient. Nurse fatigue can be described as fatigue affecting the nurse population that may result from the following contributing factors: working long shifts in the healthcare workplace; obtaining insufficient sleep between scheduled shifts; a disturbance in circadian rhythms; and attempting to balance demanding personal, familial, and social obligations in addition to the work schedule. This article explains the implications of nursing fatigue.

It revealed that specialising within this sector is rewarding as 75% of nurses experienced compassion satisfaction due to caring for traumatically injured patients. This can encourage a nurse to remain motivated to continually strive to make a difference to those in his/her care, subsequently supporting LLL. On the contrary, this study also exposed a strong correlation between burnout and compassion fatigue due to strain and the fast pace associated to caring for trauma patients. This contrastingly indicates that working in such an environment can immensely influence the possibility of burnout, which can in turn affect motivation as a nurse may have less energy to source enthusiasm to educate oneself further to improve on their professional development. Nevertheless, this study is not exclusively representative as it is solely grounded on trauma nurses, therefore the development of compassion fatigue, and burnout could possibly vary amongst factors such as the sector of specialisation, as well as: experience, age, and individual coping mechanisms, which can all in turn impact on the maintenance of

Theories for burnout in the nursing profession are presented in the jobs-demands resources model. “This study uses the job-demands resources model to clarify the role of burnout among nursing staff in the relationship between stress factors and intention to leave the profession”

Burnout is a combination of factors, including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and the reduced sense of personal accomplishment (Maslach, 1982). Emotional exhaustion is accompanied with a lack of compassion and motivation to work, while depersonalization leads to irritability.

Nurses are one of the life lines in patient care delivery, and thus deserve better working environment, and increase patient satisfaction. Safety should be the first thought that comes to mind in any treatment that is provided to the patient. Therefore, by identifying all these problems, I believe partnering with the management will evidently or invariably improve the quality of care provided to the patient and there will be a dramatic reduction in nurses’ burnout.

We spend much of daily lives working. In fact, Americans spend about eight-times as many hours working as they do eating and drinking (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013). Approximately seven in ten Americans report that they experience symptoms of stress (Anderson, Belar, Breckler, Nordal, Ballard, Bufka, Bossolo & Bethune, 2013). Stress is elicited by a variety of psychological stimulus associated with our jobs, our residences, our social interactions, and the activities we engage in (p. 249, Franken, 2007). Many Americans live with the burden of an unsatisfying job as well as a stressful workplace. An online survey of 1,848 people in the United States, conducted by the American Psychological Association, found that 74 percent of