The Role Of Nurse Burnout In Nursing

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.

Another piece of evidence to support my claim is “Research published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in January has shown that even women without past mental health problems are at risk of psychological ill-effects after abortion”(McDonagh). The abortions cause women to feel like they have abandoned something and many will feel regret which will cause other psychological problems. Nearly one in five women report dissatisfaction, regret, or sadness(Bower). Having an abortion is caused women pain psychologically and mentally. Many women can be admitted to a hospital for number of reasons resulting of

Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between nurse-patient ratio to nurse staffing, job satisfaction, and job-related burnout. Studies had shown that nurses experienced a higher emotional exhaustion and increased job dissatisfaction with a higher nurse-to-patient ratio (Aiken et al., 2002). In addition, the study revealed that 43% of the nurse respondents, who reported job-related burnout and job dissatisfaction, intended to leave their present nursing jobs within the next 12 months (Aiken et al., 2002). The study also showed that an increased of registered nurse staffing decreased both patient mortality and mortality following complications (Aiken et al.,

A study was done to view just how much horizontal violence could affect patient safety and it was found that there was an increase in patient falls and a delay in care due to nurses not communicating to one another or not wanting to help a fellow coworker when asked

Research done by Sherring and Knight (2009:1239) amongst nurses in the United Kingdom has found that 41% of these nurses experience emotional exhaustion, whereas as a study done in Malawi by Thorsen, Tharp and Meguid (2011:1) found that 72% of nurses reported emotional exhaustion. Nurses with high levels of emotional exhaustion are more likely to quit the nursing profession according to Sherring and Knight

Buchan and Aiken (2008) stated that the nurses shortage problems may be due to the nurses that not willing to work as a nurse under the current conditions in working environment. A real shortage is circumstances where experienced people are not available for a certain vacancies due to some reasons (Wildschut&Mqolozana, 2008). A news article written by Salma Khalikin in Straits Times stated that according to current situation Singapore may not be able to create enough nurses for upcoming years. The impact of nurses shortage may causes increase work load for nurses which subsequently may increase the risk for nurses made errors in clinical, the risk of increase hospital acquired infections which cause by viral, bacterial, and fungal pathogens. More over the impact of shortage of nurses may also increase death rate, and also increase the risk of occupation injuries and exposure in working environments.

Medication administration is the nursing task that carries the highest risk, and the consequences of an error can be calamitous for the patient and the nurse (Evans, 2009). There are six main types of medication error that can occur: prescribing faults, prescription errors, transcription errors, dispensing errors, administration errors and ‘across settings’ (Cheung, Bouvy & De Smet, 2009). According to a study done by (Cheung, Bouvy & De Smet, 2009), out of 106 interviews, the most common cause of medication error were: being busy (21%), being short-staffed (12%), being subject to time constraints (11%), fatigue of healthcare providers (11%), interruptions during dispensing (9.4%) and look-alike/sound-alike medicines (8.5%). On the whole, this essay will look into the management of dispensing medication error with a high alert medication, digoxin and strategies to prevent further incidents. Case scenario (Appendix A) depicted.

One ethical obligation nurses are required to fulfil during their shift is to ensure no harm is done to their patient. Due to nursing shortages and too many patient’s, nurses are finding this hard to do. Ethics help nurses make the right decisions with the guidance of their morals, but due to shortages and overworked nurses they tend to feel dissatisfied with their jobs. This results from unsafe work environments, lack of time for communication and quality care of patients. “Understaffing and overtime hours have been associated with increases in patient mortality, hospital-acquired infections, shock, and bloodstream infections” (Kane et al., 2007b).

On another hand studies clarified which factors impact the quality of nursing care from the Patient’s opinion , e.g. environment factors, patient awareness, nurse–patient relationship and personality/behavior . ( Williams 2004 ). also , wasted nursing care had important impact on nurse-reported counter events such as hospital acquired infections, patients taking error medications or dosage , and more accident of patient falls causing injury. The quality of care on the basis of nursing care insufficiency was also explored and indicated that a important relationship presented between quality care and patient safety ratings .

The nursing population had been in the public spotlight in the past few years. From recognising the contributions of nurses during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak to surfacing reports of abuse of elderly patients in nursing homes, the profession of nursing has been under scrutiny by society. Shields (2013) mentioned that “nursing has suffered a lack of understanding” by the community who associates nurses with terms such as angels or “handmaidens”. Thus, despite efforts to enhance the professionalization of nursing, there is still debate about whether it is considered a profession or not. Definition of a profession includes the use of clinical reasoning, using a body of knowledge for assessment and to justify decisions, being responsible and accountable as well as having to abide by a code of ethics (Royal College of Nursing, 2003).