Legal Implications of Nurse Burnout
Dall’Ora et al. (2020) define burnout as a physical, mental, emotional, and mental response to exhaustion due to extreme stress at work. Burnout has adverse effects on nursing and the general healthcare system. Burnout has been linked to reduced productivity, increased healthcare costs, and lack of patient satisfaction. Burnout results in a decline in care quality, exposing nurses to various legal problems.
Nurse burnout can lead to the violation of professional and ethical standards. Nurses can become notably insensitive and desensitized to patients’ needs when dealing with burnout. Burnout causes mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion that significantly detaches nurses from their responsibilities (Mudallal, Saleh, Al-Modallal, & Abdel-Rahman, 2017). When nurses fail to provide quality care and make various mistakes, they attract possible lawsuits and risk losing their licenses. Nurses also risk committing errors and omissions when mentally and physically exhausted and overwhelmed when caring for patients. These errors can lead to more drastic consequences that attract disciplinary action and restriction of their practice license. Nurses experiencing burnout can unknowingly become violent toward their patients. In such situations, nurses may respond rudely and aggressively to patients, creating an insecure environment. Burnout is also linked to a severe decline in productivity and negligence of one’s duties (Mudallal, Saleh, Al-Modallal, & Abdel-Rahman, 2017). Reduced productivity and negligence are likely to result in higher readmission cases or more deaths, which may attract legal action against the healthcare facility and possible revocation of a nurse’s practice license.
Analyze the ethical implications of nurse burnout on professional nursing practice.
Patient Care
Burnout is synonymous with reduced care quality and a decline in patient satisfaction. Worn-out nurses can hardly care for themselves, hence, are incapable of adequately caring for other people (Majrabi, 2022). Nurses experiencing burnout are less attentive to the unique patients’ needs, increasing the risk of patient neglect, harm, and abandonment. Ethics requires nurses to protect patients from harm, be kind, and do right by patients. Burnout makes it easier for nurses to neglect these duties or do the contrary.
Confidentiality
Nurses are highly susceptible to inappropriate and aggressive behaviors when experiencing burnout. Nurses risk violating patients’ confidentiality when they become aggressive and violent toward them. Burnt-out nurses can recklessly talk to a patient, giving out confidential information in a rush of anger (Palazoğlu & Koç, 2019). Such a response risks the patient’s safety when still in the hospital or causes patients to lose trust in the healthcare system.
Informed Consent
Nurses must provide patients with adequate, precise, and relevant information to make informed consent. Nurses experiencing burnout find it significantly hard to concentrate on daily activities (Dall’Ora, Ball, Reinius, & Griffiths, 2020). They may forget to provide patients with the information and coerce them to make decisions that align with the nurses’ needs rather than the patients. Violation of informed consent is likely to invalidate an intervention and attract possible legal attention.
Assess the relationship between nurse burnout and aspects of finance within the healthcare systems.
High costs
High costs are incurred when nurses are forced to take sick leave. A health facility may run into a crisis due to staff shortage within that short period forcing the facility to turn away patients (Muir, Tanya, Jennifer, & Keim-Malpass, 2022). Patients turned away may not return to the facility, leave poor reviews, and warn other patients from seeking healthcare services from such incompetent facilities. Poor care quality is a possible outcome of this scenario leading to more readmission cases. Healthcare facilities are forced to incur the cost of overtime to bridge the gap.
Staff Turnover
Burnout causes nurses to leave their jobs in search of mental health sanity. Turnover is a significant cause of poor financial health or healthcare systems. The cost of hiring new staff is significantly high. Muir et al. (2022) estimate that nurse burnout causes healthcare systems at least $40,000 due to turnover. Turnover is likely to result in poor care quality as veteran nurses leave the facility and are replaced by inexperienced nurses.
Decreased Productivity
Burnout decreases productivity among nurses. Burnt-out nurses take longer to complete their tasks and hardly get things done correctly (Muir, Tanya, Jennifer, & Keim-Malpass, 2022). Low productivity translates to low revenue accumulation in the long run. Healthcare systems need a sufficient revenue flow to equip hospitals with the right equipment for quality care delivery. Hospitals may be forced to consult another financial avenue to procure these resources, plunging them into debt.
The Impact of Nurse Burnout on the delivery of quality patient care
Burnout increases patient insecurity. Nurses can become notably violent and aggressive toward patients when worn out (Mudallal, Saleh, Al-Modallal, & Abdel-Rahman, 2017). Physical confrontations with patients reduce the feeling of safety by creating an insecure treatment environment. Nurses are unable to provide quality care when they experience burnout. Care delivery is a mental and physical process that is intentionally initiated. Burnout increases nurses’ vulnerability to making errors, neglecting and abandoning patients, and becoming insensitive to patients’ needs. Care quality declines when these parameters begin to overtake care delivery.
Burnout has also been linked to reduced patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction is a reflection of the quality of care they receive that manifests in the quality of communication, engagement of the patient in decision-making, and the nature of the treatment environment (Palazoğlu & Koç, 2019). Patients may be forced to stay longer in the hospital due to complications, and mistakes nurses make due to burnout.
Burnout can also impact care delivery positively, leading to a high quality of care. Sensitive healthcare systems leverage incidences of burnout to evaluate some of the issues that might affect patients (Majrabi, 2022). The facilities respond efficiently to these issues by implementing effective interventions to avoid adverse consequences. Burnout cases challenge healthcare organizations to reinforce support for nurses, earning their loyalty and dedication to delivering quality care. This support fosters resilience among staff and motivates them to be productive.
Nursing safety challenges associated with Nurse Burnout
Medication Errors
Nurses are likely to make medication errors when experiencing burnout (Dall’Ora et al., 2020). Medication errors, such as prescription errors, may result in severe health outcomes for patients and possible death.
Communication Breakdowns
Communication breakdown in a healthcare system can create a significant crisis (Dall’Ora et al., 2020). Nurses must efficiently and constantly communicate with staff and patients to keep the system balanced. Communication breakdown adversely affects patients’ safety as it reduces nurses’ ability to remain attentive to their needs.
Infections
Burnt-out nurses can hardly follow safety procedures and protocols. The risk of infection is higher in such scenarios as nurses may neglect to wear gloves and neglect other infection control procedures (Dall’Ora et al., 2020). Patient falls are also higher when nurses are burnt out, as nurses can hardly identify and prevent these risks.
References
Dall’Ora, C., Ball, J., Reinius, M., & Griffiths , P. (2020). Burnout in nursing: a theoretical review. Human Resources for Health volume. Retrieved from https://human-resources-health.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12960-020-00469-9
Majrabi, M. (2022). Nurses Burnout, Resilience and Its Association with Safety Culture: A Cross-Sectional Study. Open Journal of Nursing. doi:10.4236/ojn.2022.121006
Mudallal, R., Saleh, M., Al-Modallal, H., & Abdel-Rahman, R. Y. (2017). Quality of Nursing Care: The Influence of Work Conditions and Burnout. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences. doi:10.1016/j.ijans.2017.06.002
Muir, K. J., Tanya , W., Jennifer , L. M., & Keim-Malpass, J. (2022). Evaluating the Costs of Nurse Burnout-Attributed Turnover: A Markov Modeling Approach. Journal of Patient Safety. doi:10.1097/PTS.0000000000000920
Palazoğlu, C. A., & Koç , Z. (2019). Ethical sensitivity, burnout, and job satisfaction in emergency nurses. Nursing Ethics. doi:10.1177/0969733017720846
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