Essay on Stress and Nursing

In the nursing profession stress is encountered daily. Stress is managed differently by all nurses. The way nurses manage stress determines the impact of stress on nurses. There are some nurses who use stress as a positive way of learning and others handle stress negatively. There is more research that supports nurses handling stress in the workplace more negatively than positively. The purpose of this paper is to provide scenarios of how nurses handle stress from the workplace in a negative, positive and borderline way.

The article titled “Lay representations of workplace stress: What do people really mean when they say they are stressed? by Gail Kinman and Fiona Jones, the research questions is what do people actually mean when they say they feel stress due to their jobs? and How people manage their stress? The researchers were wondering how people define the word stress due to past researches participants used to define the word stress with different meanings. For this reason, they conducted this study to find a better concept of the word stress.

Stress is a normal feeling, and can be beneficial as it motivates people to accomplish tasks efficiently. However, prolonged stress can be harmful and lead to burnout. Burnout is defined as a “syndrome of feelings of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach & Jackson, 1986).” Healthcare providers, especially nurses, are often exposed to high-stress environments that put them at risk for burnout. It is reported that 40% of hospital nurses experience burnout and one in five hospital nurses consider leaving work within one year (Ilhan, Durukan, Taner, Maral, & Bumin, 2007). This is concerning because nursing burnout not only affects the wellbeing of the nurse, but also the kind of care the patient receives. According to the National Institute of

Nurses are continuously exposed to high levels of stress and anxiety that, over time, can affect job performance. In the article “The impact of job stress on the job performance of nurses” the main focus is hospitals in Irbid, but can also be related to hospitals in North Carolina. The study was conducted by Dr. Fatima lahcen and Yachou Ait Yassine in August of 2016. To make a more accurate reading on stress, related to age, gender, and education, they decided to conduct an educational survey. Many of the individuals who took the survey were nurses, and was notably a moderate level of stress leading to fairly high levels of job

Anxiety is a normal human emotion that a multitude of people experience throughout their lives. The occurrence of a disease, illness, ailment, etcetera involve innumerable anxiety-provoking situations. Long-term anxiety can threaten the body’s immune system, giving an already ailing patient a harder time to gain health and recover. Nurses encounter, interact, and treat high-stressed, anxious patients on a daily basis. However, not all nurses are prepared to deal with the emotional hardships that numerous patients experience. How nurses’ react to patients stress and emotional burdens can have a drastic effect on their overall health and well-being. The goal of all nurses should be the same: to find ways of assisting and helping the patient work

Nursing managers can begin the recognition process by educating their staff on the cause and effect of stress and ensure they are well-informed on the impact of work-related stress in the nursing environment. The impact of stress may result in a loss of motivation, disappointment, confusion, headaches, mood swings, shorter breaks, change in sleeping and eating patterns, and variations in work attendance (Health and Safety Executive, 2014). Negative stress can cause many physical and psychological issues and can lead to overall exhaustion and prolonged illness (McIntosh & Sheppy, 2013). By being aware of these signs, coping strategies can be implemented to alleviate current stress and help prevent further stress from developing.

The United States’ eminent “competitive spirit” is a major characteristic that differentiates the U.S. workforce from other countries. This competitiveness is a key component in American society as it pushes workers to not only produce more but to increase his/her standard of living (Nixon). While competitiveness can lead to a flourishing society, oftentimes this competitiveness burdens workers, raising the amount of stress on a person. A study conducted by Harvard School of Public Health reported that out of 2,505 respondents, 53% felt a “great deal of stress in the past month” was a result of work affirming the correlation between stress and work (“The Burden of Stress in America”). As job markets are drastically becoming more competitive,

For the nurses experiencing chronic stress and burnout there are a myriad of manifestations that are detrimental to their health. The rush of cortisol and epinephrine combined with the prolonged exposure to these hormones in the body are not beneficial in eliminating the psychological and emotional stressors in the workplace. Instead they can cause physical and mental impairments. Physical symptoms include but are not limited to headaches, hypertension, insomnia, and gastric ulcers (Jackson, 2012) (Pender, et al., 2015). Possible psychological symptoms of chronic stress are anxiety, confusion, and irritability (Pender, et al., 2015). The decline in a nurse’s health as a result of chronic stress and burnout is an important characteristic that

Students going to school and working at the same time can become very stressed, overworked, and may drop out. Not all students who have a job and go to school will be stressed, overworked, or will drop out. In the nursing field there are many hours where an individual may not have as much time as they thought to do work, causing stress. Many hours of work and school can make a student so stressed they may decide to change majors because of such workloads. “If the level of role strain is not addressed and attempts are not made to reduce it, stress levels and feelings of incompetence increase, and the faculty member experiences difficulty in meeting the obligations of the job” (Cranford, 2013, p. 103). This is a reason, for some nurses not

Multiple studies over the past twenty-plus years have looked at factors affecting the nurse’s workday and the effects it has on them. When an individual first enters a chosen career, he or she is driven. If the work environment is not encouraging of the individual's efforts and concerns, the reality of the job and the individual's prospects begin to deviate and frustration and disappointment happens. (Kerri, 2014) These feelings can bring about job displeasure, resulting in decreased efficiency, loss of confidence and concentration, and behavior changes. If these circumstances are not addressed, stress accumulates and causes typical stress-related symptoms. The definite stressors within the work environment that lead to stress and burnout can be different among occupations and between individuals within an occupation. The starting place of burnout is in the work environment, but because not every individuals working in a certain environment will experience burnout, personal risk factors must have a role in putting the individual at risk for burnout. Therefore, personality is another important factor to be considered.

Stress has become such an ingrained part of our vocabulary and daily existence, that it is difficult to believe that our current use of the term originated only a little more than 50 years ago. The term “stress”, as it is currently used, was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who defined it as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” (American Institute of Stress [AIS], 2012). When stress was first studied in the 1950s, the term was used to denote both the causes and the experienced effects of these pressures. More recently, however, the word stressor has been used for the stimulus that provokes a stress response. Stress is particularly acute among people who work in the “helping profession” (Isikhan, Comez, & Danis, 2004; Gilbert & Daloz, 2008; Siegrist, Shackelton, & Link, 2010) and can have devastating effects on healthcare staff and their work environments (Lambert, Lambert, & Yamase, 2003). Depending on the nature, intensity, and duration of the one’s relationships, stress can have negative effects on both physical and mental health in the work environment. The hospital environment contains a number of factors that are unhealthy and cause suffering in nursing professionals. In fact, the nursing profession is considered one health profession with a high level of occupational stress (Costa & Martin, 2011).

In the nursing profession, nurses are subject to various types of burnout. This coined concept has been associated with professions that are centered around helping people. Predominantly, nursing is a profession where providing care for the sick and unwell is crucial and can sometimes take a toll on the nurses. When nurses experience job burnout, both the nurses and the patients suffer. Nurses no longer enjoy going to work, and as a result, patients are not advocated for appropriately. This can become problematic, as the nurses are not performing their job and the patients are not receiving the level of care they deserve. Burnout can also be caused by working longer shifts (Braunschneider,2013).

Workplace stress is an issue that competent employers cannot afford to ignore, and it is important for them to take positive measures to tackle it. Wright and Bonett (2007, p.142) believe that if an organisation assume that workplace stress is not an issue for them, or that employees who appear unable to cope with the pressures of working life are ‘not good enough’, then the likely consequences for the business could be: poor job performance, high cost in sick pay, negative impacts on customer relationship, the risk of legal claims against the organisation etc..

Three out of every four American workers describe their work as stressful. According to the Holmes-Rahe Life Events Scale, which rates levels of stress, many of the most stressful events in life are related to the workplace. Some examples are firings, business readjustments and changes in financial status, altered responsibilities, a switch to a different line of work, trouble with the boss, changes in work hours or conditions, retirement and vacations. Workplace stress costs American employers an estimated $200 billion per year in lower productivity, absenteeism, staff turnover, workers' compensation, medical insurance and other stress-related expenses. However, stress may not always be a bad thing. It can stimulate creativity and

Job stress has proven to be a difficult issue to tackle. Unlike physical or chemical hazards, there is not an obvious tangible hazardous agent. This issue has also been preempted by corporate stress management, health promotion, or employee assistance programs, which explain stress as a purely personal reaction, and often treat the symptoms, not the causes, of job stress. The occupational stress field also has been plagued by a variety of definitions and difficulties in measurement of stress.(Buunk,De-Jong,Y-Bemas&De wolff,1998) In addition, changes in job design or work organization are often inherently more "systems challenging" and require more radical restructuring of workplaces than reducing levels of exposure to toxic substances or