Burnout Syndrome In Nursing

THESIS STATEMENT: Hospitals should improve staff allocation as it can be detrimental to not only patients but also employee 's work performance and health, hospitals need to hire additional staff or better manage their current employees.

What was once thought of as a profession driven by compassion and the desire to help those in need has now become filled with weary burnt out nurses who have lost sight of their purpose. Stress has caused them to distance themselves from the principles nursing is built upon. Our health care system needs to be revamped to improve the quality of care being administered. Nurses can be proactive and take steps to avoid burning out but, our health care administrators have to take matters into their hands because they have the capacity to initiate change. They must realize the gravity of the situation and take an offensive position to make a stand against the crisis of nursing

This chapter provides a background of nurse burnout and their effect on quality of care

When one thinks about nursing, caring, empathy, and compassion come to mind. There is a link, an unbreakable union, for nurses that "compassion fatigue is the cost of caring for others in pain" (Boyle, 2015, p. 49). Compassion fatigue (CF) and its impact on nurses are predominant problems in many Emergency Departments (ED). Nurses perform a number of procedures throughout the day, but primarily the thing that they deliver the most is themselves (Harris & Quinn-Griffin, 2015). Nurses give care, succor, kindness, and tenderness to patients, families, other nurses; support to doctors and advanced practitioners, and give directions to medical technicians, nursing assistants, and other staff every

In America, people all over the world deals with stress. Being a nurse is a stressful job. Being stress can be fatigue and even cause ill health for an individual. Stressing in the environment can cause employees to stressful situations causing difficult health, and safety problems not only for the nurses, but also for their patients. Many workers suffer from stress. It is important to identify why nurses are becoming stressed and how to reduce work related stress.

Every day nurses are faced with ethical dilemmas. Challenges in these situations are becoming more and more complex due to increasing workload and sicker patients. When a nursing unit is understaffed not only are nurses more likely to become burnt out, but their patients are far less likely to receive the quality of care they deserve. The problem is that the Federal regulations require hospitals who participate in Medicare to “have ‘adequate’ numbers of licensed nurses (RN, LPN, CNA) to provide care to all patients as needed,” but the regulations

Burnout is classified viewed in three phases. The first phase of burnout is the arousal phase. The nurse shows anxiety, insomnia, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, feelings of beings overwhelmed, frustration, sadness, and new physical symptoms, such as headaches and stomach problems. If the nurse does not recognize that these symptoms require intervention, the second phase is energy conservation. In this phase, the nurse starts to call in sick to work; o she may be chronically late getting to duty. Deadlines are not met, a cynical or resentful attitude develops, a persistent sense of fatigue pervades both are the nurse’s personal and professional’s life.

The strains on the healthcare field can eventually lead to physical,mental and emotional exhaustion also known as burnout. As caretakers,educators,and lifelines, nurses are responsible for the many roles they carry as they continue to give care to patients day in and day out. One of the most common reasons nurses are stressed is the patient to nurse ratio. For instance, a nurse may be taking care of 6 patients when he or she should only be taking care of 4.

Emergency nurses treat patients that are in a state of an acute illness or trauma. They deal with many critical situations and have to deal with doctors, family members and other healthcare workers (Johnson & Johnson, 2014). The environment of an Emergency Department is stressful and nurses often observe many tragedies, which can lead them to experience symptoms of compassion fatigue (CF) (Duffy, Avalos, & Dowling, 2015). CF has been called the cost of caring and is a side effect of helping others who have experienced some form of trauma (Figley, 1995; Boyle, 2015; Yoder, 2010). The symptoms attributed to CF are often physical as in headaches, stomach upset, insomnia and chronic fatigue; or emotional as in apathy, cynicism, irritation,

Short staffing is one of the many challenges nurses encounter in the work environment. The impacts can be detrimental primarily to the patient’s outcome. To examine the effects of short staffing, research was conducted on 36,539 hospital inpatients to evaluate the amount of those exposed to an understaffed shift and how many patient outcomes resulted in a NSO (Twigg, Gelder, & Myers, 2015). NSO’s are nurse sensitive outcomes based on the nursing care provided to the patient. Patients exposed to short staffing had an increase of greater than one chance of NSO’s compared to patients not exposed (Twigg et al., 2015). 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.

Many theories exist in nursing today and are used as a guide to practice, and as well as providing a framework for nursing research. The purpose of theory in nursing is to provide an improvement in practice and positively to influence the health and wellness of persons, families and the community. In nursing, there should be a mutual relationship between theory and practice, practice providing the basis for nursing theory development where theory is validated in practice (McEwen, 2014).

I thought about nursing burnout through watching the video by speaker Madelyn Blaire. Burnout is categorized as physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. Burnout can lead to dulled emotions and detachment. I wonder why nurses are burning out.

Burnout may be defined as being psychologically worn out by one's work; burnout adversely impacts motivation, productivity and job satisfaction and is reflected in low levels of enthusiasm or energy, negative disposition towards others at work and one's perception of productivity (Spector, 2012). The article identifies four (4) indicators of burnout. The first indicator identified by the author was being easily annoyed (Garfinkle, 2005-2015); researchers support this indicator; cynicism and detachment were identified as one of the symptoms of burnout (Beheshtifar & Omidvar, 2013). Cynicism and depersonalization are directed at both persons receiving service and co-workers and it generally affects the employee's personal life as well (Embriaco,

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.

Burnout is one of the factors that may affect employees’ efficiency, a group connections, motivation and general emotional wellbeing of workers in the working environment. The idea of burnout was separately presented by Herbert Freudenberger in 1974 and Christina Maslach in 1976. The term was used to portray the mental condition of health care volunteers who were indicating such side effects as emotional depletion and loss of inspiration (Freudenberger, 1974, 1975; Maslach, 1976). Burnout is characterized as a psychological syndrome of an emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a decreased level of individual accomplishment (Schaufeli, Maslach, and Marek 1993).