Hello reader!
Welcome to this eye-opening article about nurse burnout.
After reading this article, you will understand what nurse burnout is, its causes and effects, and how you can protect yourself against it or handle it once you experience it.
We will cover the following topics in this article:
- What Is Nurse Burnout?
- The Major Causes Of Nurse Burnout
- Effects Of Nurse Burnout
- How To Prevent Nurse Burnout
There’s so much to discuss; let’s begin!
What Is Nurse Burnout?
Nurse burnout is a state where the nurse experiences physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion caused by work-related stressors like a pressured work environment, emergency decision-making, long hours of patient care, and the strain associated with caring for patients who have poor outcomes.
When these unmanaged stressors in the workplace are left without being addressed, this results in nurses feeling detached and disengaged.
These are considered the first warning signs of nurse burnout.
Due to emotional exhaustion, the nurse will exhibit nursing burnout symptoms such as lack of motivation, feeling frustrated, and failure to deliver as per job expectations.
Nurses who fail to address the burnout issues by considering self-care have fallen victim to hopelessness and even sunk into depression.
The World Health Organization characterizes burnout by:
- Feelings of cynicism regarding your career
- Constant inability to meet all the work requirements
- Depleted bandwidth when working resulting in total exhaustion
Unfortunately, nurse burnout affects millions of nurses whose mental health and physical well-being are questionable.
The Major Causes Of Nurse Burnout
According to the World Health Organization research, medical professionals, especially nurses, face a greater risk of burnout than other professionals.
There is a growing demand for nurses, which has not been met thanks to the great percentage of the aging baby boomer generation and the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases yet.
Here are more factors that cause nurse burnout:
Long Hours Of Working
The Bureau Of Labor Statistics projects that the job opportunities for registered nurses will grow by 12% by 2028.
This might be great news for nursing students who will soon join the nursing workforce but it is also a source of growing issues in the industry such as understaffed medical facilities, overworked and frustrated nurses, and worst of all nurse burnout.
This has led to nurses’ lack of adequate sleep because of the long hours and consecutive shifts.
Most nurses never get enough sleep between shifts because they need to meet the demand for patient care which requires long hours.
Long hours of working and inadequate sleep is currently the norm for nurses today and a major cause of nurse burnout.
Stressful Working Environments
Each nursing specialty has its challenges, but there are nursing specialties with more challenges than others.
They require working in highly stressful environments such as the emergency department or intensive care.
These environments require nurses to handle combative patients, ethical dilemmas, traumatic injuries, high mortality rates, and many other situations which cause high-stress levels to nurses and increase the risk of burnout.
Such stressful workplaces result in an increased risk of burnout for nurses.
Inadequate Support
If the nurse workplace lacks teamwork, collaboration, and support from senior management, burnout might be frequent.
Collaboration is very important in nursing because it leads to many lives getting saved.
Poor teamwork usually results in conflict, bad communication, zero cooperation, and peer bullying, major things that contribute to an unpleasant work environment that results in medical errors which lead to bad outcomes for patients.
Emotional Exhaustion From Patient Care
Patient care is an important part of nursing, and the satisfaction that comes with helping a patient get better could be worth all the hours of work.
However, for health care workers who work in critical departments or offer end-of-life care, lower recovery rates and higher mortality rates often result in compassion fatigue and increased burnout rates.
In understaffed hospitals, nurses who care for more patients than they should risk burnout.
Emotional drain is rampant in understaffed hospitals or facilities, where the ratio of nurses to patients is more than 1:4.
Effects of Nurse Burnout
Nurse burnout has negative effects on both the nurses and the medical facility they are working in.
Here are some effects of nurse burnout:
Nurses’ Shortage And Turnover
The nursing shortage is often a result of a low percentage of nursing school enrollment, increased retirement numbers, an increasingly aging population and their need for healthcare workers, and many nurses quitting the nursing profession completely.
According to an American Association of Colleges of Nursing survey, 1 in 5 nurses quit their job within the first year, while 1 in 3 nurses quit in their second year.
According to a Registered Nurse Network nursing burnout statistics, a huge percentage of the nurses quitting are doing so because they feel overworked thanks to the increasing number of patients; they don’t enjoy their job anymore, and others say it is because they spend most of their working time on endless paperwork.
With such a great number of nurses quitting, those who remain in the profession find themselves battling more workload than they can handle, and they end up experiencing burnout resulting even in more quit rates in the profession.
Lower Quality Of Care
This is one of the major risks linked to nursing burnout.
Nurses commit medical mistakes because they are always exhausted.
Patients end up bearing the consequences because they receive low-quality care.
There have been extreme cases of patient discomfort and in some unfortunate instances, deaths have occurred.
For example, there have been real-life instances where the nurses experiencing burnout also had unnecessary infections like urinary tract and even surgical infections.
This can cause great discomfort to the patient.
Mortality
With tired nurses forcing themselves to work every day in these medical facilities, the mortality rates in patients keep increasing.
Most of them fail to make the right medical decisions on patient cases resulting in most of them dying even in instances where they could have lived.
Nurses don’t usually want to make these medical errors; their drained mental and emotional states cause them to make them by misjudging a medical situation.
Increased Depression And Suicide Rates
The depression and suicide rates among nurses are strongly connected to nursing burnout.
According to a 2020 survey, many nurses and physicians experiencing burnouts experience depression and commit suicide.
However, their physical and mental well-being was positive for the nurses who sought help and experienced support at their workplaces.
How To Prevent Nurse Burnout?
Nurses can prevent nurse burnout before it happens and seek help on time.
Both nursing professionals and their employers can do a few things to prevent nurse burnout.
Here are some useful tips for both nurses and employers to prevent nurse burnout situations or deal with symptoms of burnout.
Improved Schedules
Nurse managers must consider creating favorable work schedules for their nurse staff to avoid job dissatisfaction.
The shift lengths shouldn’t be too long, the maximum length should be 9 hours maximum with adequate rest.
If you happen to be a nurse look for employment in facilities that treat their staff humanely.
Avoid going crazy over time and letting your employers know that you need a schedule that allows you to achieve a healthy work-life balance.
You must have enough time to work and also enough time to spend with your loved ones or do your favorite things.
Breaks Are Important
A break from work schedules is always advisable for nurses.
Make sure you take advantage of your off days and take a vacation or even a staycation to deeply relax and change your scenery.
Health institutions should also make it mandatory for all health workers to take vacations to rest and ensure that their staff takes all the vacations they need.
This will help improve professional performance, increase job satisfaction, and reduce overwork.
Reach Out For Support
As a nurse, if you have zero support, then it is time to seek support.
There are nurse support groups and work buddy systems that make it easy for nurses to vent their frustrations, and discuss crucial issues affecting them in the workplace and the daily challenges that they face.
Such support groups are amazing, and they help you vent so that you can truly relax when you are out of the work environment.
When you have a support system, you will hardly feel hopeless or depressed and when you still do because your work environment is unforgiving, you can always seek professional help from a therapist or a counselor.
Come Up With Coping Methods
Learning your coping methods will help you handle the things that stress you in your work environment.
Coping skills such as restorative exercise, breathing techniques, journaling, and a post-work relaxation routine can make a huge difference in your physical and mental health.
Consider Changing Your Nurse Specialty
Perhaps you are in a specialty that is too demanding and stressful, contributing to your feelings of depression.
If you love your nursing profession and wouldn’t want to be among the quitters, then consider changing specialties.
There are many nursing careers that arent stressful.
Choose a specialty that will not depress you and require long work hours such as a family nurse practitioner or a nurse educator.
Consider enrolling in an advanced nursing degree program like BSN, DNP, or MSN.
With an advanced nursing degree, new doors to other nursing opportunities will open, and they don’t have to involve direct patient care.
They could be in leadership positions in the nursing field with lower stress levels such as in oncology, radiology, and others.
Consider Proper Self-care
If you notice signs of burnout, then you might consider getting into a self-care routine or activities.
Remember that it’s only you who can ensure your own emotional and mental stability so that you can, in turn, give your patients the best quality care.
Self-care should be mandatory especially if you are a nurse who works in a high-stress environment.
The following are some great examples of the self-care activities you can indulge in.
- Physical exercising: Be the nurse who exercises physically so that you can not only be physically fit but reduce any stress feelings
Exercising has numerous benefits, such as managing stress levels and preventing conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
- Mindfulness Practice/Meditation: Meditation will help you manage chronic stress, burnout, and anxiety and help you achieve that great sense of well-being as a nurse
- Eat Healthy Foods And Don’t Skip Meals: If you work longer shifts, you must have access to nutritious foods at work.
You might consider carrying packed food to work and don’t forget to take that lunch break or midnight break if you are on the night shift to eat.
Keep your body well-fed with nutritious foods to avoid feeling hunger pangs on top of exhaustion.
You can’t be both the exhausted nurse and the hungry nurse!
- Go For Body Massages: You are constantly on your feet and taking care of others.
It would be best if you took care of yourself too.
Please book an appointment at a spa and get that body massage and other spa treatments because you need them.
Your body will relax and your mental health will improve.
After that relaxing massage, you will be rejuvenated enough and ready to tackle whatever work stressors await you when you get back on duty.
Conclusion
When you chose your nursing career, patient satisfaction was at the forefront; however, this cannot happen if you experience burnout in your career.
We have seen how nurse burnout affects the quality of patient care.
We have also looked at the causes, nurse burnout prevention measures, and how to recover from nurse burnout.
As a nurse, remember to give yourself the same compassion you offer your patients.
You will feel burnout at some point in your career.
Know that you need to look out for yourself more when that happens.
Go for a vacation and indulge in the self-care activities highlighted above.
You don’t want to risk patient safety because you cannot perform outstandingly as you always have.
Nurse burnout is something that you should take very seriously.
If you are experiencing burnout, currently find out how to reduce nurse burnout by not only reading nursing burnout articles like this one but taking measures to ensure that you can continue to practice nursing for as long as you should effectively.
FAQs
What is a Nurse Burnout?
Nurse Burnout is an extreme level of nurse fatigue where the nurse’s mental, physical, and emotional state is exhausted due to work environment stressors, especially in understaffed facilities. Most nurses either quit their jobs or quit their nursing careers when the burnout becomes too much.
How does Nurse Burnout affect patient care?
Clinicians who experience burnout develop a lack of attention to detail and commit medical errors with severe consequences to patients. In some unfortunate incidents, patient deaths have occurred. Nurse Burnout and patient safety go hand in hand in this case, and the only solution is to make work conditions better.
What are the signs of Nurse Burnout?
The nurse will always feel tired and hate going to work. They will experience emotional and physical tiredness and will lack the passion for helping others. They will lack appetite and even experience insomnia. Their anxiety and depression levels will be high.
What causes Nurse Burnout?
The common reasons for Nurse Burnout are long work hours, a high-stress work environment, the emotional strain caused by patient care, sleep and food deprivation, the lack of support, and negative patient outcomes. Most nurses try to prevent it, while others succumb to the pressure and quit their nursing careers altogether.
Why is Nurse Burnout a problem?
Medical facilities experience a shortage of nurses who quit their jobs because of burnout. In that case, they are not able to offer quality patient care. When nurses feel tired and keep working, this affects their performance level, organizational commitment, and the quality of nursing care in an institution.
Why is it vital to prevent Nursing Burnout?
It is very important because there will be zero safety incidents caused by tired nurses when prevented. There will be no staffing shortfalls because of the high quit rate or low retention, and no cases of dissatisfied patients will be heard because of low-quality health care.
Which nurse specialty is likely to experience burnout?
According to data from the registered nurses’ network, the critical care nurse specialties have the highest Nurse Burnout rates. These specialties exist in the emergency department and the intensive care unit. The nurses in the emergency department are the most affected by burnout, with the highest rates.
