High levels of work place stress and professional burnout continually affects nurses and other health care workers globally. This paper will explore this nursing issue by articulating the concepts of stress and professional burnout relative to the nursing profession. The term stress is defined as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or as exceeding his or her resources and is endangering his or her well-being” (Wlodarczyk, & Lazarewicz, 2011 p.848). This definition focuses on how stress is connected to an individual’s awareness of their resources and environment. The term professional burnout is described as “physical, emotional and mental exhaustion that results from long-term involvement in work situations that are emotionally demanding” (Wlodarczyk, & Lazarewicz, 2011 p.848), highlighting how the work place environment is directly affecting an individual’s health and well-being.
Solutions for Nursing Personnel Shortages Executive Summary Senior Human Resource Management should adopt some changes in order to combat the current growing nursing/healthcare personnel shortage. Employees simply want to be heard and sympathized with. Nowadays the nursing shortage has caused many problems in the healthcare industry. First and foremost, the quality of care being provided to patients is declining due to the fact that there are not as many nurses to care for the patient appropriately. As a matter of fact, the workload being dumped on the employees is steadily increasing.
Week Five: Systematic Article Review Martha Mireles NURS 518 December 24,2012 Margaret L. Colucciello Week Five: Systematic Article Review Background Information The profession of nursing is associated with a highly stressful environment. Dealing with people on a daily basis who are sick or diseased is hard enough without the external environmental stressors that accompany nursing. Things such as working long hours, working short handed and attitudes of co-workers can always contribute to stress and raise the level of stress. Nursing students on the other hand have all of the above stressors with the added stressor of academic performance. With the problem at hand implementation of stress management interventions of both nurses and students have been suggested (Galbraith,& Brown, 2011).
Several factors have contributed to Registered Nurses (RNs) leaving clinical nursing practice. These includes job dissatisfaction, increase in age of working nurses, verbal and physical abuse from managers, physicians and co-workers, lack of support from members of staff, fatigue and exhaustion due to work overload, and retention and recruitment. This situation can be improved by ensuring adequate nurse to patient ratios by reducing work load, promoting respects of nurses, giving rewards and recognizing nurses for a job well done, empowering nurses and nursing management, and increasing recreational activities for nurses to reduce fatigue and burnout. Purpose and Research Questions The study was conducted to identify the factors why RNs are leaving clinical nursing practice, what their expectation from the Nursing Management, job satisfaction and factors influencing retention of nurses. The research question for this study was “What is the experience of RNs who leave clinical nursing?
Generally the nurses experiences of care for the dementia patient in the acute care setting was one of uncertainty, due to the fact the nurses felt they had a specific lack of knowledge. Nurse’s knowledge and education As the population grows and there’s an increase in the number of dementia patients, nurses in the acute care setting need to be skilled and educated to support patients with dementia as stated by (Archibald & Cunningham 2006 p.55I). Erikson & Saveman (2002) described the lack of specialized education for nurses in regards to dementia patients in the acute care setting. This is of particular concern as there are many demands on nurses in the acute care setting and can influence the nature of the care they give. According to Nolan (2006, p.213) nurses had concerns of
The fatigued nurse becomes overwhelmed and can easily make mistakes such as medication errors or performing procedures on the wrong patient. They also begin to lose compassion for their patient and become more task oriented. Often times it gets to a point where they are just showing up for work and lose sight of their original desire to help an ill patient get better or make a difference in their patients day. We go into nursing with the intention to help people who need it and share with patients our nurturing personalities but that sometimes gets lost in the tangled web of stressful situations, long work weeks, long shifts, increasing patient-to-nurse ratios, constantly changing field, and not enough education on the support systems in place or methods for coping. One thing I’ve noticed to be very common with nurses is remembering to take care of themselves.
Research Summary and Ethical Considerations: Complexity in Practice Environments Grand Canyon University: NRS 433V 1/12/2014 Title Needed This article discusses the complexity in nursing practice environments that affect patient outcomes. There are many different aspects of the relationship between nursing care and patient outcomes. Nurses struggle to provide quality care in a high-demand practice environment, all the while dealing with stressors. Through research of the nurse work environment three key stressors that influence the quality of care given by nurses were identified. This new phenomenon has been labeled complexity compression.
Warning Signs for Five Concepts of Compassion Fatigue Physical Manifestations Compassion fatigue can manifest itself through physical symptoms. Some signs associated with compassion fatigue are weariness, loss of strength, reduced output, diminished performance, loss of endurance, and increased physical complaints such as gastrointestinal complaints, frequent headaches, back pains, hypertension, and insomnia (Coetzee & Klopper, 2010). Illness can lead to increase in sick calls that lead to increase in the work loads of other nurses, which then affects the safety and quality of care the patients receive. Emotional Manifestations Compassion fatigue can also manifest itself through emotional disturbances. Those suffering
Healthcare organizations are finding it difficult to provide quality healthcare services in a timely manner due to the nursing staff shortages. Healthcare facilities are attempting to develop solutions to solve this shortage problem, but the current solutions are resulting in short term negative impacts. This warrants the need to continue to look for innovative ways to offset the additional costs as well as the reduction in quality that is being felt. NURSING STAFF SHORTAGES Nursing Staff Shortages: Why is There a Problem and What Can be Done to Solve It? A large problem in today’s healthcare environment is a shortage of nurses to fill positions.
The nursing shortage is a major obstacle in health care industry today that threatens to decrease nurses productivity, efficiency, competency, quality, etc and in turn increase fatigue, burnout, nurse-to-patient ratios, etc. The goal of this paper is to discuss practice innovations that can improve the quality of health care and suggest practice interventions against those