Introduction
The Healthcare sector is prone to different challenges, mainly those affecting the working personnel. One fundamental problem witnessed recently, especially during the pandemic, is nurse burnout. Nurse burnout can be defined as a situation where nurses and healthcare personnel lack the motivation and zeal to continue their everyday work. Nurse burnout can be defined as how nurses respond to stress (Dall’Ora et al., 2020). Different factors might cause stress in the workplace. In the GI, one major cause that might cause nurse burnout is understaffing. Understaffing might lead to stress among nurses due to fatigue as a result of overworking, which further affects their service delivery. This paper conducts a systematic review to understand nurse burnout in healthcare, especially in laboratories.
Articles Summary
Vivian et al. (2019) researched to investigate the effects of stress and nurse burnout in tertiary medical facilities and how this affects their service delivery. The author notes that stress and burnout are the leading factors affecting registered nurses’ service delivery in tertiary medical facilities. This is because stress and burnout affect nurses’ mental and physical well-being. The authors conducted their study involving three hundred and forty nurses over four weeks. Of these participants, almost 40% reported to be feeling stressed (Vivian et al., 2019). The study revealed minimal patient satisfaction was recorded in cases where nurses had a conflict with the physicians, inadequate support, and much workload. The study’s results also revealed that nurses did not demonstrate much mindfulness in their work under these conditions.
In the second study, Stewart et al. (2023) researched nurse burnout in ICU, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors suggest that nurse burnout has been a key concern in the healthcare sector for a remarkable period, but it worsened during the pandemic. The authors believe reducing nurses’ stress and burnout, especially in the ICU, is crucial in delivering quality patient care. The authors begin their paper by defining what burnout is. They draw meanings from Freudenberger, the expert who tried to define burnout in healthcare in 1974. Additionally, they draw meaning from the framework Maslacch (1996) developed to draw meanings to burnout. The article continues by examining the importance of physician burnout in a healthcare system, where they discuss its effect on patient outcomes. The authors complete the paper by looking at the prevalence of burnout in the ICU in recent years and its effect on patient outcomes, especially during the pandemic.
Rehder et al. (2021) studied the science behind healthcare burnout to improve nurses’ well-being. The researchers’ main objective was to address a current issue of healthcare worker well-being, which has become a topic of discussion in the sector. The authors suggest that positive emotion, the opposite of burnout and stress, is key to ensuring optimal delivery of service in the healthcare sector. The prevalence of nurse burnout in the United States of America is between 40% and 50% of the total healthcare workforce. The authors also suggest that healthcare workers experience burnout 1.5 to 2.5 times more than workers in other sectors (Rehder et al., 2021). The research suggests that the Maslach Burnout Inventory is the best scientific measurement tool for nurse burnout.
Application of the Evidence
All three articles point out that nurse burnout is a prevalent issue in the healthcare sector. Vivian et al. (2019) conducted a study on three hundred and forty nurses to investigate nurse burnout’s effect on patient outcomes and healthcare delivery in tertiary medical institutions. Their findings align with the previously conducted SWOT analysis, which found that lack of support and understaffing are some of the major causes of burnout. The study’s outcomes align with the findings of Stewart et al. (2023), who found that nurse burnout negatively affected service delivery, especially in critical care. Contrary to these two studies, Rehder et al. (2021) aimed to understand the science behind nurse burnout. The authors presented the most effective scientific way of measuring burnout and provided data on burnout of healthcare workers in the United States of America.
Impact on Healthcare Delivery
All three articles point out that nurse burnout negatively impacts healthcare delivery. First, the data provided by Rehder et al. (2021) suggests that healthcare workers experience burnout 2.5 times more than other workers from other sectors in the United States of America. Additionally, the research places nurse burnout prevalence at 50%, implying that almost 50% of nurses in the United States have negative emotions, meaning that half of the nurses deliver effective service. This is a wrong sign since the medical sector is so demanding, and effective service delivery should be at its maximum. The implication of half of the medical service delivery being impacted by nurse burnout is that patient outcome is low and healthcare objectives are not met. This might paralyze the sector. The research by Vivian et al. (2019) highlighted evidence-based negative outcomes of nurse burnout which is not good for the healthcare sector. The study highlighted issues such as conflict between nurses and physicians. This affects cooperation between healthcare providers which in turn have a repercussion on patient outcome. Additionally, Vivian et al. (2019) highlighted a lack of concentration from those nurses who reported being stressed, which negatively impacts service delivery in the healthcare sector and patient outcomes. Cases where nurses show low levels of concentration might cause some negative effects, such as wrong drug administration and poor conduction of tests, among other undesirable outcomes.
Conclusion
Nurse burnout is a prevalent issue in the healthcare sector that requires immediate response from key sector players. Burnout can be defined as the way through which nurses respond to stress. The current study places this issue at 50%, and the leading cause is understaffing, lack of support, and work overload. Nurse burnout has negative effects on service delivery and patient outcome. There is a need to improve healthcare workers’ well-being to minimize the prevalence of nurse burnout.
References
Dall’Ora, C., Ball, J., Reinius, M., & Griffiths, P. (2020). Burnout in nursing: a theoretical review. Human resources for health, 18, 1-17.
Rehder, K., Adair, K. C., & Sexton, J. B. (2021). The science of health care worker burnout: Assessing and improving health care worker well-being. Archives of pathology & laboratory medicine, 145(9), 1095-1109.
Stewart, S., Klein, L., Hunt, S., Dayama, N., & Schmidt, R. N. (2023). PHYSICIAN BURNOUT IN THE ICU: THE IMPORTANCE AND THE SOLUTION. Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences, 35(1), 103-117.
Vivian, E., Oduor, H., Arceneaux, S. R., Flores, J. A., Vo, A., & Madson Madden, B. (2019). A cross-sectional study of perceived stress, mindfulness, emotional self-regulation, and self-care habits in registered nurses at a tertiary care medical center. SAGE Open Nursing, 5, 2377960819827472.
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