Cathryn, you bring up an excellent point. Physician burnout is real and I am glad to hear that the AMA is doing something to help the physicians. I believe burnout is a major problem among all health care workers. I remember being in nursing school and learning about the nursing shortage. Then we would go to the hospital for clinical training and the nurses would be tired and burned out. I remember thinking that I did not want to be like them, but here I am 23 years later and I, too, am fighting burnout. I don’t believe enough is being done to address this issue, it is hard work to care for other people and with rising expectations and budget cuts it is getting more difficult to provide compassionate care.
Nursing Shortage is a problem we all should be aware of. There are many factors that may lead to a nursing shortage, such as having stressful and unsafe working environments, and our nurses are being overworked. This is a problem we should be aware of because it is affecting the patient care. Nurses would not have enough time to stay with a patient if they have more patients to worry about. Nurses play a big role in our hospitals and communities, “Nurses play significant roles in hospitals, clinics and private practices. They make up the biggest health care occupation in the United States. Nursing job duties include communicating between patients and doctors, caring for patients, administering medicine and supervising nurses' aides”(study).
Melvin Kooner, an anthropologist who entered medical school in his mid-thirties, characterizes physicians as “tough, brilliant, knowledgeable, hardworking, and hard on themselves.” (Kooner, 1998, pg. 374) Many personal conversations with medical students, residents, and attending physicians from a variety of specialties confirm Kooner’s assessment. Doctors work hard, work long hours, deal regularly with life-and-death situations, and make substantial personal sacrifices to practice in their field. These attributes of medical practice can provide a great deal of satisfaction to the aspiring or practicing physician, but can also be a source of professional and personal distress. Burnout or the experience of long-term emotional and physical exhaustion may result from an inability to cope with the demands of work-related responsibilities and personal obligations. If untreated, burnout may lead to more serious consequences such as depression and suicide.
Is Nursing Shortage Really Faculty Shortage? Potential Solutions As the United States’ population ages and the Affordable Care Act continues to be implemented, the need to address the shortage of nurses and faculty is more pressing than it ever has been. However, this is a multi-dimensional problem, to get to the crux of it one has to ask what the major contributing factors to such shortages are and what can be done to prevent them? Perhaps the most significant influence to the nursing shortage is the fact that each year a large number of qualified applicants are denied entrance because of a lack of prepared nurse educators (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2014). Equally troubling, if not more so, is that according to a 2014 survey by the AACN there is already an 8.3% faculty vacancy, coupled with the age of professors with doctorates being 61.3 and master’s degrees 57.2.
A rising issue in nursing in recent years is how staffing levels effect nursing outcomes including, but not limited to, nurse burnout and job satisfaction. Three types of staffing contribute to nurse workload; they are staffing by hours per patient day, staffing by ratios, and staffing by acuity. Following is an in depth analysis of how nurse staffing affects nurse job satisfaction and burnout.
Working in long-term care can be overwhelming. Imagine you are a new graduate nurse putting your new found knowledge and skills to practice for the first time. Your orientation lasted three days which is standard for nurse home orientation compared to hospital orientation that last approximately six to eight weeks for new grads. The shift has just begun and already you have a new admit, new found pressure ulcer to assess, a possible medication reaction, several new orders to take off and eight patients to document on for varying reasons. Feelings of frustration and confusion take over as you are the only nurse on the unit along with a Certified Medication Technician (CMT) and three Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) taking care of 47 patients. Ideal nurse-to-patient ratio continues to be a national issue in both the hospital and long-term care setting (LTC). In the LTC setting there is no official nurse-to-patient ratio; there is a suggested staff-to-patient ratio. This issue not only affects the new licensed nurses but the seasoned nurse as well. Recently, there has been controversial debates as to whether heavy workloads are detrimental to patients. The federal, state, and local government regulates many aspects of healthcare. However, it is the physicians, nurses and other healthcare professional that provide care directly to patients. Consequently, does insufficient staffing, heavy workloads, and unsupportive work environment directly contribute to poor patient satisfaction, nurse burnout, high turnover and job dissatisfaction?
Nursing is a very demanding job and can have an overall impact on the nurse both mentally and physically. Specifically within the critical care environment, nurses are more likely at risk for developing job burnout, due to the intense nature of their work. Job burnout is a type of job stress in which the state of physical, emotional or mental exhaustion is combined with doubts about the competence and value of your work, (Mayo Clinic, 2015). The specific burnout that the nurse may be experiencing is not only affecting them, but also their patient they are looking after. It is critical for us, as nurses, to be able to recognize the warning signs of burnout and find ways in which to take steps in order to address them, in order to improve the
Burnout is a highly unusual type of stress disorder that is essentially characterized by emotional exhaustion, lack of empathy with patients, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishments. The nature of the work that healthcare practitioners perform predisposes them to emotional exhaustion. On the other hand, the lack of empathy towards patients is caused by the nurses feeling that they are underpaid and unappreciated. Numerous researches have associated burnout with the increasing rate of nurse turnover. This paper explores the causes of burnouts in nurses as well as what can be done to prevent the them.
The nursing shortage is currently a growing issue in The United States. The shortage began in the late 1990's. “This downsizing and shortsightedness regarding recruitment and retention contributed to the beginning of an acute shortage of RN's by the late 1990s... the current shortage has lasted longer and been more severe than any nursing experienced thus far." (Huston 2017 pg 69). As a result of advancing technology and extensive research on medicines, the average lifespan of humans has increased. With an increase in the demand, “the U.S. nursing shortage is projected to grow to 260,000 registered nurses by 2025. A shortage of this magnitude would be twice as large as any nursing shortage experienced in this country since the mid-1960s.” (AACN 2014). There are many factors that contribute to this nursing shortage, including the outdated misconceptions about the nursing professions, retiring nurses, and underfunding of nursing programs, especially issues in
Vargus, Crsitina , Guillermro A. Canadas, Raimundo Aguayo, Rafael Fernandez, and Emilia I. de la Fuente. "Which occupational risk factors are associated with burnout in nursing? A meta-analytic study." International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology 14.1 (2014): 28-38. Ebscohost. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
The nursing shortage in the healthcare setting, can result in decreased quality of care with the patient and this can have a significant impact on the financial aspect of the organization. As time changes, there are more acute illnesses being presented in the hospital as a result of the patient prolonging to seek medical treatment. The delay in seeking medical treatment often stems from the patient not having health insurance and seeking home remedies as an alternate method of treatment. When the patient present to the hospital with multiple acute illnesses, the staff should be skilled, ready and available to render the necessary treatment for the patient. The idea of nursing shortage, poses the risk and outcome of poor
The company remains committed to the continuous growth and improvement of not only the clients and candidates, but also their families. A survey conducted by the American Medical Association and the Mayo Clinic found that more than half of all doctors exhibited a minimum of one symptom of burnout in 2014, an almost nine percent increase from results obtained in 2011. Roughly 47 percent of participants stated they were emotionally exhausted, with 40 percent exhibiting symptoms of depression. Finding the right job helps to minimize problems of this
Poghosyan, Clarke, Finlayson, and Aiken (2010) in a cross-national comparative research explored the relationship between nurses’ burnout and the quality of care in 53,846 nurses from six countries. Their researched confirmed that nurses around the world experience burnout due to increase workload. Burnout was manifested as fatigue, irritability, insomnia, headaches, back pain, weight gain, high blood pressure, and depression. Burnout influenced nurses’ job performance, lowered patient satisfaction, and it was significantly associated with poor quality of care. Patient safety decreased as nurses’ job demands
Medical and Healthcare Professionals. Burnout affects the medical and healthcare field, which includes physicians, nurses, and other personnel. According to Edwards and Dirette (2010), healthcare professionals are known as the profession with the highest risk for stress and burnout. Research has depicted that ICU physicians cope with high levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased personal achievement (Guntupalli, Wachetel, Mallampalli, & Surani, 2014). Moreover, research has shown a high prevalence of burnout among physicians, which includes one-third of physicians that have experienced burnout (Romani & Ashkar, 2014). Burnout is often caused by the physician’s inability to balance their personal and professional life (Romani & Ashkar, 2014). In addition, 45.8% of physicians report having at least one symptom of burnout (Romani & Ashkar, 2014). Among ICU physicians, the common causes of burnout include overwhelming and difficult work, being powerless to change, and making the impossible happen (Guntupalli, Wachetel, Mallampalli, & Surani, 2014). Furthermore, burnout increases medical errors and decreases job
Nursing shortage According to the Canadian Nurses Association(2009), human health resources have stated that by the end of 2011 Canada will experience a shortage of 78 000 registered Nurses (RN) and a shortage of 113 000 nurses by the end of 2016. Globally, there will be a shortage of 4.3 million health care workers. It was also shown that approximately 38% of new graduate nurses leave their workforce within the first year of employment (Lavoie-Tremblay, Wright, Desforges, Gelinas, Drevniok & Marchionni, 2008). According to registered Nurses Association of Ontario (2011), full time positions of RN dropped to 57.9% in 2010 from 58.9% in 2009.
PRWeb. "Physician Burnout and Stress Now Reaching Critical Levels." Press release. Press Release Newswire. 12 Apr. 2007. PRWeb. 25 Apr. 2009 .