Working long hours as a nurse can definitely be stressful especially when working at nights. Additionally, insufficient sleep is a huge factor that affects the performance of the nurse. Unlike day nurses, night shift nurses have to adjust their sleeping habits in order to stay awake throughout their shift. This issue is important because lack of sleep may compromise patient safety, such as increase risk of medication error or patient falls, resulting in poor patient outcomes. Sleepiness in nurses has been shown to impact patient care and safety (S. Surani, Hesselbacher, Guntupalli, S. Surani, & Subramanian, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to highlight the effect of insufficient sleep of night shift nurses that leads to stressful situations …show more content…
environmental or internal demands) that surpasses his/her resources which overwhelms and endangers his/her welfare. The model integrates stress, primary and secondary appraisals, and coping mechanism as they relate to an individual's stressful event. In the nurse's situation, this framework can be effectively utilized in the nurse's psychological stress and coping responses. For the primary appraisal, the nurse perceived that lack of sleep which could compromise patient safety became a stressful and challenging situation. During the secondary appraisal, he was able to evaluate his internal strength and coped with the situation. Thus, the transactional model of stress and coping by Lazarus and Folkman strongly reflects the nurse's stressful …show more content…
Being resilient can be utilized with the nurse's scenario mentioned earlier. By taking breaks and managing to cope with the situation, a small part of resiliency was already taken in effect. However, the nurse could increase his resiliency to better himself in future stressful events. For example, incorporating self-efficacy in his situation would strengthen the nurse's resiliency and increase his resistance to stress. Self-efficacy, in the scenario, would work if the nurse believes in himself of performing in a certain way in order to achieve his outcomes. Also, the nurse could plan ahead by setting realistic goals. As a new nurse assigned on night shifts, the nurse could set goals by planning ahead to plan enough time to sleep throughout the day time before going to work at night. He could set up a log or an alarm to aid him with his planning. Committing to a sleep schedule may be difficult in the beginning but it may develop the nurse's sleep cycle. With the belief of succeeding and setting realistic goals, the nurse would bounce back from losing focus due to his lack of
There are several approaches to take in solving the problem of nurse fatigue. Firstly, the nurse has an obligation to not going to work if too tired. Schedules should be designed to help with this where nurses are held accountable to pick days that does not contribute to fatigue. In addition, nurses can work as a team and cover each other effectively for breaks. Nurses should be able to take stress free breaks and not have to worry that their patients will not be taken care of. Lastly nurses should be educated on sleep hygiene and the effect it has on patient
A considerable amount of literature has been published on the impact of working hours (8 vs. 12 hour shifts) on fatigue among the nurses. These studies revealed that twelve-hour shifts increase the risk of fatigue, reduce the level of alertness and performance, and therefore reduce the safety aspect compared to eight-hour shifts (Mitchell and Williamson, 1997; Dorrian et al., 2006; Dembe et al., 2009; Tasto et al., 1978). Mills et al. (1982) found that the risk of fatigues and performance errors are associated with the 12-hour shifts. Beside this, Jostone et al. (2002) revealed that nurses who are working for long hours are providing hasty performance with increased possibility of errors.
In the recent past, nursing has come to the forefront as a popular career amongst students across the globe. The demand for nurses has kept increasing gradually over the years. In fact, the number of registered nurses does not meet the demand of the private and public health sector. This phenomenon has resulted in a situation where the available registered nurses have to work extra hours in order to meet the patients’ needs. With this in mind, the issue of nurse fatigue has come up as a common problem in nursing. According to the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), nurse fatigue is “a feeling of tiredness” that penetrates a persons physical, mental and emotional realms limiting their ability to function normally. Fatigue does not just involve sleepiness as has been assumed before. It involves utter exhaustion that is not easily mitigated through rest. When nurses ignore the signs of fatigue, they risk the development of chronic fatigue and other health problems that may not be easily treated. Additionally, fatigue may cause nurses to lose more time at work as they may have to be away from work for several days to treat it. The issue of nurse fatigue has permeated the nursing profession to the extent of causing errors in the work performed by nurses. Fatigue causes a decrease in a nurse’s ability to make accurate decisions for themselves and their patients. It is therefore important to find ways to curb nurse fatigue such that it is no longer a problem. Nurse fatigue is a danger to the patients, organizations and to the nurses themselves and must be mitigated adequately.
Nurses need to be physically and mentally able to deliver their duties to ensure the safety and health of those they care for. Thus, occupational stress among nurses is significant.
Through the appropriate educating of healthcare professionals in preventative and coping measures towards stress, communication is improved as well as worker self-awareness, allowing for increased patient care and safety (Pipe et al., 2011). This is often achieved through workplace seminars and/or general employee availability to workplace counsellors, promoting risk awareness and planning and preparation (Castleden, McKee, Murray, & Leonardi, 2011), allowing for the self-management of psychological health in events of shock and trauma. Training in resilience also promotes problem solving and persistence through encouraged self-reflection (Chen & 陳季員, 2011), characteristics crucial in the support of patient health. By self-reflecting, healthcare can recognise and solve psychological factors that may be inhibiting their work and/or their balance of their life outside of work. One example could be a nurse that has recently had a family member diagnosed with cancer, and as a result they had been neglecting regular clinical observations with one of their chemotherapy patients. Through the utilisation of resilient problem solving, the nurse is able to ask to swap patients with a co-worker, until they feel capable to professionally interact with the patient. Resilient responses, however , are not entirely fixed in consistency; they are often dictated by environment and resources (e.g. family members available, general physical health) and as a result of this subjective processing, responses will vary between patients (Southwick, 2011). This individual maintenance of resilience as a personal quality further justifies healthcare workers trained in effective coping mechanisms in order to provide an unbiased environment for unrestricted, unique, positive psychological responses. Overall, the
Sleep is one of our basic needs to survive and to function in day to day operations, but not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. Some people can survive on very little sleep, i.e. five hours a night, and some people need a lot of sleep, to the extend that they are sleeping up to 10 to sometimes 15 hours a night (Nature, 2005). According to Wilson (2005) the general rule states that most people need from seven to eight hours of sleep. The deprivation of sleep in our society in continually increasing with the demands in society increasing work loads, the myth that a few hours of sleep is only necessary to function properly and that sleep is sometimes considered as killing time (Nature, 2005). Sometimes sleep deprivation is also caused by other situations like sleep disorders, i.e. sleep apnea, chronic insomnia or medical conditions such as stress (Wilson, 2005).
This article has shown me that new strategies are needed to reduce sleep disturbances, improve sleep quality, and support the need for supplemental daytime sleep in hospitalized individuals. These strategies include monitoring patients’ sleep and assess quality of sleep and duration, resolving the problems of sleep disturbance, recognizing that nighttime noise, light, and other factors potentially interfere with patient sleep, minimize lighting in shared patient rooms and turn off lights earlier at night, frequently assess for pain and administer prescribed pain medications to minimize sleep disruption. This article taught me more about sleep cycles and disturbances in hospitalized patients. As a future nurse, I have to accurately assess the patients’ personal characteristics and health education needs, and share this knowledge with my classmates.
The nursing theories that are currently in place in the emergency room to promote professional growth and development are vital; however, there are other nursing theories that could be implemented to help improve professional growth and development. A theory that should be implemented to more effectively promote professional growth and development is Orem’s theory of self-care deficit. Orem’s theory is considered a “realistic reflection on nursing practice” (McEwen & Wills, 2014, p. 146). If the nurse is not taking care of him or herself, “stress [can] accumulate [and the] nurse can … become angry, exhausted, depressed, and sleepless” (Ruff & Hoffman, 2016, p. 8). By the nurse having these feelings he or she is not able to take care of him
One of the most serious issues in nursing, that can affect a nurses career is nursing burn- out. According to the article “Where have all the nurses gone”, current nurses that are practicing, report high rates of job dissatisfaction (which is part of burn out) and 1 of 5 nurses may quit nursing in the next 5 years (Dworkin, 2002). Burnout is associated with nurses not coming in to work, not feeling satisfied when doing their job, high turnover rates and a lack of commitment to the work (Katisfaraki, 2013). If a nurse becomes burned- out, they may not take care of their patients as well and could make mistakes with medication administration. A study performed in the United States by Dr. Jeannie Cimiottti, shows that hospitals with high burn-out rates among nurses have higher levels UTI’s, and surgical infections (World, 2012). Nursing burnout not only affects the nurse, but it also affects the patient, the nurses’ colleagues, and the nurses’ family; nursing burn out often leads to emotional exhaustion and depression, that can effect relations and communication between the nurse effected and the person they are communicating with. This paper will cover what burn-out is, who is susceptible to burn out, and treatment and prevent nursing burn out.
According to Kashyap, et al., (2014), resilience is a positive personal attribute buffers the impact of stress and helps maintain health. Research has identified personal characteristics of individuals that possess the capacity for resilience. During the hiring process, selecting candidates that possess the identified personal characteristics would increase the likelihood of successful acclamation to the ER environment. Resiliency characteristics include: creative thinking/or problem solving, decisive action, tenacity, interpersonal connectedness, honesty, self-control, and optimism (Tubbert, 2016). Resilience is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress (Kashyap et al., 2014). Resilient individuals have the ability to successfully cope during times of chronic stress (Kashyap, et al., 2014). Nursing in the ER is stressful, therefore teaching nurses how to manage the stress needs to be a priority for nursing administrations. The most important defense against stress is resilience (Kashyap, et al., 2014). Eliminating occupational stress from ER nursing is impossible, but resilience training can improve how nurses deal with the unavoidable stress. Resilience is an interaction between individual resources and current situational events (Goodman et al., 2017). Maintaining resilience requires diligence and continuous evaluation of the need for support. Resilience is not constant across time and context, rather it is dynamic in nature (Goodman et al., 2017). Resilience training will assist ER nurses in overcoming
In less stressful environment, nurses able to incorporate caring relationship, improve interactions between patient and a nurse, and develop understanding of the other person’s perspective (Nicely, K, Sloane, D., Aiden, L., 2012).
Nurses Joe and Sarah have been working in a medical surgical unit that has been experiencing a nursing shortage, which has led to an increase in the workload. Sarah has been feeling the physical effects of the stress and feels there is a lack of management support, while Joe experiences some feelings of being overwhelmed, but tries to use it as learning experiences. Joe has developed positive methods of coping, while Sarah is quickly heading towards burnout. Implications and Conclusions The information provided in the literature has great implications for practice in many units, including the writers. It is with great hopes that the research published can be presented to the committees on the unit in hopes that some of the workloads can be decreased to help with staffing and retention rates.
The authors and scientists from a different study by the U.S National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health on long and short-term sleep deprivation state directly that “in certain jobs, people face sleep restriction. Some professions such as health care… require working at night. In such fields, the effect of acute total sleep deprivation (SD) on performance is crucial” (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance). Depending on their schedule, nurses can often be susceptible to sleep deprivation and are no exception, especially if they are working long hours. The study performed research on how acute and chronic sleep deprivation can affect the brain and how it can slow down or worsen thought process and rationality throughout the day for working adults. The authors also explain that “motor function, rhythm, receptive and expressive speech, and memory ...deteriorated after one night of SD.” (Alhola and Polo-Kantola, Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance) Although everybody is affected by a lack of sleep differently, some might have the ability to handle it a lot better than others, but it is fair to say that no one can perform their jobs perfectly if their brains are being affected by sleep deprivation. This organization concludes this study by explaining that there is still much research that needs to be
Important public policy issues have arisen in our modern 24-hour society, where it is crucial to weigh the value of sleep versus wakefulness. Scientific knowledge about sleep is currently insufficient to resolve the political and academic debates raging about how much and when people should sleep. These issues affect almost everybody, from the shift worker to the international traveler, from the physician to the policy maker, from the anthropologist to the student preparing for an exam.
How often have you ever woken up and wondered why sleep is needed in the first place and questioned the importance of it? Those are very popular questions that many humans ask today, as sleep is an essential part of a person’s health and wellbeing, yet people all over the world each night do not get enough sleep. This research essay will be looking at the nature of sleeping, the importance of getting a good night’s rest and the consequences if a person does not get enough sleep. A good night's sleep is incredibly important for health and making a person feel better. Sleep is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle, and can have many beneficial factors for the body, mind, and so much more as “ an average human sleeps