Nurse Burnout Research Paper

The Question asked was “Why is burnout important in nursing?”, I look at the question as, “Why is burnout important to recognize before burnout happens?”. I don’t see burnout important as much as I believe recognizing it. Burnout is defined when nurses can no longer cope with the stresses and strains of professional nursing and choose to leave the profession to seek employment elsewhere (Masters, 2014). I believe if burnout is recognized as something that happens when entering a nursing career, nurses can proactively work on avoiding this. As a new nurse, these things are not thought of. New nurses are so focused on learning their job and performing at the best of their ability and while doing so they are slowly reaching burnout. Knowing what is expected to be a nurse, the work environment stresses, home life stresses, and knowing the unequal balance that can plague a nursing career, can be a platform to find strategies to manage burnout.

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

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

In the recent past, nursing has come to the forefront as a popular career amongst students across the globe. The demand for nurses has kept increasing gradually over the years. In fact, the number of registered nurses does not meet the demand of the private and public health sector. This phenomenon has resulted in a situation where the available registered nurses have to work extra hours in order to meet the patients’ needs. With this in mind, the issue of nurse fatigue has come up as a common problem in nursing. According to the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), nurse fatigue is “a feeling of tiredness” that penetrates a persons physical, mental and emotional realms limiting their ability to function normally. Fatigue does

In the ever changing world of healthcare, healthcare organizations in order to be the most efficient in their delivery of healthcare, streamline their organizational structure to stay competitive, while providing the best patient care possible. This process can place increasingly undue stress onto its staff resulting in nurses having to do more with less available resources which ultimately increases their workload, has them working longer hours due to staff shortage, which contributes to an increase in the nurse burnout rates. This eventually filters down to the patient’s level of care and means less time spent on each

One of the most serious issues in nursing, that can affect a nurses career is nursing burn- out. According to the article “Where have all the nurses gone”, current nurses that are practicing, report high rates of job dissatisfaction (which is part of burn out) and 1 of 5 nurses may quit nursing in the next 5 years (Dworkin, 2002). Burnout is associated with nurses not coming in to work, not feeling satisfied when doing their job, high turnover rates and a lack of commitment to the work (Katisfaraki, 2013). If a nurse becomes burned- out, they may not take care of their patients as well and could make mistakes with medication administration. A study performed in the United States by Dr. Jeannie Cimiottti, shows that hospitals with

Understaffing has become a major problem throughout our country, being that it often results in leads to unsafe conditions,avoidable death and injuries, and the possibility of a nurse being unhappy with his or her job.At the point when nurses are compelled to work with such high nurse - to -patient proportions, patients are exposed to death ,diseases, harm, or get sent home too early without sufficient training about how to deal with their ailment. A major reason for the understaffing of hospitals and specialized care home is for the simple fact that it is more cost efficient.Laws regarding how many nurses should be required per unit varies from state to state.Studies have been undertaken to correlate nurse understaffing and nursing fatigue. Those studies have uncovered that these two issues adversely affect the nature of care given to an individual which is the, patient to nurse ratio and operational expenses in facilities such as hospitals and specialized care facilities.For an example a national study that was published in a recent JAMA-Pediatrics issue and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative and the National Institute of Nursing Research reached the conclusions that an obscure amount of neonatal intensive care units, or NICU’s, throughout the country provide adequate quantities of nurses to meet national rules and that the units administering to the most children are additionally the most understaffed, putting the wellbeing of fundamentally sick infants at risk.One of the study authors were Eileen Lake, who is a nursing professor and associate director of the Center for Health

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.

Nursing burnout is serious and in order to ensure that nurses are taken care of, the administration must implement incentives and policies that will provide nurses with the resources to maintain a healthy work life balance. Burnout accounts for many of the medication errors and patient injuries in healthcare facilities. Most nurses are overwhelmed because of the caseload and longer workdays necessary to complete charting. Many nurses are also disgruntled because of denied vacation requests that cannot be approved because of non-coverage. Research has shown that when employees are happy then there are less errors and injuries in

Despite the concern for patient safety amongst healthcare leaders, the American healthcare system is experiencing major problems with patient safety and medical errors. Per the World Health Organization, “as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed whilst receiving health care”. “Approximately 43 million safety incidences occur each year”. “Medication errors costs 42 billion US dollars annually”. The connection of nurse fatigue and its adverse events on patients is substantiated in numerous studies The AHRQ performed a study that indicated shifts longer than 12 hours were substantially associated with increased nursing errors. It further

This paper explores six published peer reviewed journals that report on results from research seeking to explore the relationship between the three nursing outcomes job dissatisfaction, intent to leave the job, and nursing burnout, as well as working long or extended shifts, and occupational stress. It also addresses various preventative measures such as eating better, stress-management and exercise which have been known to reduce stress, and ultimately burnout. Each article used different research methods and different data sets such as the Hospital Compare section of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) website, and the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPSS), however, each

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

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