Avoiding Nursing Burnout
Finding ways to minimize nursing burnout helps both care provider and patient. But avoiding nursing burnout includes both an understanding of the potential causes of the problem, and and a consideration of what can be done to minimize it on both on an individual and departmental basis. The National Institute of Health released an interesting look at the benefits of supporting empowered leadership to address the issue.
Nurse burnout is a widespread phenomenon characterized by a reduction in nurses’ energy that manifests in emotional exhaustion, lack of motivation, and feelings of frustration and may lead to reductions in work efficacy. This study was conducted to assess the level of burnout among Jordanian nurses and to investigate the influence of leader empowering behaviors (LEBs) on nurses’ feelings of burnout in an endeavor to improve nursing work outcomes. A cross-sectional and correlational design was used. Leader Empowering Behaviors Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) were employed to collect data from 407 registered nurses, recruited from 11 hospitals in Jordan. The Jordanian nurses exhibited high levels of burnout as demonstrated by their high scores for Emotional Exhaustion (EE) and Depersonalization (DP) and moderate scores for Personal Accomplishment (PA). Factors related to work conditions, nurses’ demographic traits, and LEBs were significantly correlated with the burnout categories. A stepwise regression model–exposed 4 factors predicted EE: hospital type, nurses’ work shift, providing autonomy, and fostering participation in decision making. Gender, fostering participation in decision making, and department type were responsible for 5.9% of the DP variance, whereas facilitating goal attainment and nursing experience accounted for 8.3% of the PA variance. This study highlights the importance of the role of nurse leaders in improving work conditions and empowering and motivating nurses to decrease nurses’ feelings of burnout, reduce turnover rates, and improve the quality of nursing care.
Link to our course on Mindfulness in Nursing: Decreasing Burnout, Improving Outcomes
Nurses Assaulted More then The Police. Nurses on the job are facing down real physical danger as well as emotional, psychological and verbal abuse while delivering patient care. Who wants to come to work to deliver patient care only to fear for their safety? That kind of kind abuse is workplace violence and is a major contributor to burnout. I am not talking about the patient with dementia and psychiatric disorder who is abusive. I am talking about those who is awake, alert, orienting to person, place and time. Nurses are assaulted with greater frequency then Police Officers and Prison Guards. We need to get way past this old thinking that Nurses have to tolerate abuse. Nurse Abuse can come from patients, the families, coworkers and physicians.
The fact of the matter is that nurses and other health care professionals are no longer going to be turning the other cheek. The tide is turning, and if healthcare employers don’t take ownership in protecting their employees better. Its incumbent for employers to provide security officers, policies, procedures and training. For employers who do not comply, they are increasingly like to find themselves dragged right into a lawsuit for failure to protect their workers.
