Nurses play a vital role in patient care, and working twelve-hour shifts can be exhausting and stressful. Stress and fatigue can have many effects on nurses’ health. It is important to understand how these factors affect nurses in order to find ways to correct it and minimize the harmful outcomes. This is significant to nursing because it is extremely prevalent and common in the nursing population to experience fatigue and stress from the job, especially as a new nurse. In studying these behaviors, the goal is to implement interventions that attempt to decrease the likelihood of stress and fatigue. In turn, there can be better outcomes in nurses’ health in the future, and the quality of patient care that is delivered. Fatigue is directly related to sleep …show more content…
Stress and fatigue are related to the type of work that nurses do, and it directly affects a their health. Occupational stress can have harmful effects on nurses’ health. Short-term stress can lead to disorders such as “chronic fatigue to depression” (Donovan et al., 2013, p. 969). Long-term stress can lead to psychological issues and increases the likelihood of engaging in unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, drinking, poor diet and little to no exercise. New nurses are especially susceptible to experiencing stress and fatigue as they get adjusted to the demands of the job.
Phenomena of Concern Understanding the lived experiences and the meaning of stress and fatigue in new nurses who work twelve-hour shifts.
Purpose of the Study The aim of this study is to understand the lived experience of new nurses who work twelve-hour shifts in regards to stress and fatigue, and how it affects their overall health and wellbeing.
Research Question What is the meaning of stress and fatigue to newly graduated nurses who work twelve-hour shifts, and how does it affect their overall health and
The idea of shift work is a common one, but for nurses this is not a simple changing of staff during a certain time, change of shift signifies a time of purposeful communication between nurses and patients, in order to promote patient safety and best practices (Caruso, 2007). During this time, there is the possibility for this critical opportunity to relay important information to become disorganized by extraneous information, rather than concentrating on the needs of the patient (Sullivan, 2010). Often the patient is left out of the conversation, and is not a part of the process. Patients and families can play an important role in making sure these transitions in care are safe and effective (AHRQ, 2013).
Have you ever been so tired that when you are conversing your train of thought completely derails, and you don 't recall what you were even talking about in the first place? In the field of nursing, nurses are known to endure long work hours, some up to 12 hours a day, and perhaps sometimes longer. According to NANN, "Current evidence regarding effects of working long shifts on nurse performance, cognitive functioning, and patient outcomes is inconclusive" (Samra, 2015, p. 311).
Caused by the constant demands of work and lack of taking breaks, burnout is a challenge in itself and can get even worse if gone untreated. More and more nurses have begun to feel the effects of burnout, raising a dire concern that healthcare workers while taking care of others, must also remember to care for themselves which can, unfortunately, go neglected when the work is so heavily focused on saving the lives of
Diminished personal accomplishment is to evaluate oneself negatively because of failure a result it occurs when the individual’s external demands become higher than their coping ability.(Maslach, Schaufeli, leiter., 2001) . Many studies revealed that there is a high prevalence of burnout among nurses worldwide, it can affect approximately 45% of medical and nursing staff .(Abdo, El-Sallamy, El-Sherbiny, & Kabbash., 2015) . Bases upon several studies 25% to 33% of critical care nurses have a symptom of sever burnout syndrome.(Moss, Good, Gozal, Kleinpell, & Sessler., 2016). BURNOUT AMONG NURSES AND QUALITY OF CARE
Nurses are reporting dissatisfaction and feeling burn-out due to working longer and more hours. Consequently because of this, nurses are leaving their place of employment and employers are experiencing high turn-over rates and staff shortages. The bill, Registered Nurses and Patient Protection Act was introduced by U.S. House Representative Tom Lantos. In Lantos’s bill it states, “no registered nurse would be required to work beyond eight hours in any work day or 80 hours in any 14-day work period” (as cited in Jordan & Tabone, 2000). Lantos’s bill regulated the number of hours a nurse is required to work.
Nurses experienced unsatisfied work environment, fatigue, burnout and increased in career change leading to the nursing
The Effects of Working the Night Shift, written by Julia Tortorice, is an article about it affects health or nurses and how it affects their families. The author also mentions that currently acts are pending to improve staffing and the overall health of nurses. The author successfully uses humor and the logical appeal of pathos to make it easier to understand. She also gives advice of what a nurse can do which will help me brain storm my solutions in my paper. For instance, Tortorice (2014) says, “Studies have suggested that napping nurses suffer from less fatigue than non-napping nurses” (p. 3).
“Better Nurse Staffing and Nurse Work Environments Associated with Increased Survival of In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Patients” states that, “In 2012, registered nurses had 11,610 incidents of MSDs (musculoskeletal disorder), resulting in a median rate of eight days away from work. Among all healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, there were 65,050 nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses that required a median of seven days away from work.” While we are unable to attribute every workplace related injury to stress, burnout, and poor work conditions, it is easy to correlate extreme fatigue with decrease in concentration and increase in avoidable
Short staffing decreases the quality of care provided to each patient, as nurses develop burnout with increase workload. Implementing helpful measures can decrease nurse burnout and the affect it has on patient outcomes. For example, PCSN (patient care support nurses) are a useful resource to provide when nursing staff is low. Nurses can also benefit from applying time management measures during their shifts, such as prioritizing and delegating. The impacts of short staffing may be minimal on patient care if these the proper measures are implemented.
Nursing in the United States and around the world is often associated with twelve-hour shifts and fatigue. As individuals enter into the field of nursing they are often well aware that they will work a twelve-hour shift, at least once throughout the duration of their career. Many new evidence-based research articles have surfaced in the past few years, that may signal that twelve-hour shifts are not ideal for the nurse nor their patients. The increasing length of a shift often signals a positive correlation to overall poor job satisfaction, quality of care, and patient safety (Ball, J., Day, T., Murrells, T., Dall 'Ora, C., Rafferty, A. M., Griffiths, P., & Maben, J., 2017). Other articles suggest that the twelve-hour shift allows for more
An ordinary day of a nurse is filled with enduring hours of physical, mental, and emotional work. A nurse always has to be on their feet and ready to go. They must be ready face the obstacles placed upon them, and make life and death decisions in the snap of a finger. This is not an easy job by any means, and can leave you run-down at the end of the day. It may feel as though the day is a never-ending cycle, but it is so worth the health and happiness of others in
Nurses fatigue is growing problem nurse face each day in the healthcare environment, and he can be caused by long hours, sleep deprivation, and possibly by accepting extra assignments can be dangerous for both nurses and patient. These inadequacies can result in major implications for the health and safety of registered nurses and can compromise patient care which can lead to fatalities. (American Nurses Association, 2014). In my experience, being fatigued from working much 12-hour shifts consecutively was very difficult as I felt extremely tired, resulting in lack of focus, missing important details during the handing over the process with impaired cognitive functioning. This I found was detrimental to the patients and myself as it impedes quality and has a deleterious effect on patient safety.
Just like a saw needs to stop being used in order to be sharpened, a nurse needs time off to recuperate; it’s as simple as that (Covey, 1989). It is important not to burn the candle at both ends, working more than the designated shifts and longer than 12 hours should be avoided. An example used regarding medication errors and working too many hours involves a nurse working a double shift on a pediatric oncology unit didn’t correctly prime an IV line and caused cardiac arrest in a patient (Kelley, 2004). Although nurses work three days a week, their hours remain the same as other full time employees that work the typical 5 day schedule. A nurse’s time off should be valued because they are the last line for patient care, they are the ones administering the medication the doctor prescribes and the pharmacy makes (Kelley, 2004).
Nursing Role Stress (NRS) Gray-Toft and Anderson (1981a) 34 4-point Scale Never (0) Very Frequently (3) .934 Affective
While literature has not confirmed that a number of mistakes and occupational injuries happen because of the level of stress and anxiety student experience during the clinical learning, however the level of stress compromises the quality of care that they need to provide to patients. It also affects the students’ levels of comprehending the nursing theory to practical nursing. Literature has shown that due to the problem student nurses feel not belonging to the environment and to the nursing