Mental health wellness is important for healthcare workers. Promoting mental health results in improved staff wellness, leading to improved patient care—poor mental health results in high turnover among healthcare professionals. Additionally, poor mental well-being negatively impacts productivity among healthcare workers. Consequently, patients become affected by reduced quality of patient care. Decreased mental health among healthcare workers impacts the workers and patients under these workers (Melnyk 24).
Additionally, healthcare facilities are negatively impacted by nurse turnovers, brain drain, and being forced to train new personnel. Consequently, all healthcare stakeholders need to improve mental well-being among healthcare personnel. This paper discusses the problem of poor mental well-being among healthcare professionals and provides a possible solution to the problem. The proposed solution mainly entails reducing patient-to-provider abuse and improving staff well-being by creating staffing ratios to reduce workloads, improving personnel wages, and organizing shifts based on providers’ needs instead of using swing shifts.
Enforcement of rules against patient-to-provider abuse will effectively result in improved wellness. Also, the creation and enforcement of safe staffing ratios and workloads improve healthcare providers’ wellness, as well as patient care. Other factors that promote staff well-being include adequate remuneration and allowing staff to work during their desired shifts (Gray et al. 1). These improvements create a healthy and equal work environment, resulting in increased well-being and healthier relationships among colleagues.
Definition of Problem
Mental health problems result in significant impacts in workplaces, especially in healthcare institutions. Various factors contribute to the high prevalence of mental health illnesses among healthcare professionals. Mental health workers end up unhappy and have poor well-being due to these mental health issues. Consequently, healthcare professionals lose productivity, impacting their ability to carry out their duties, resulting in a reduced quality of care. Gray et al. (1) discuss a phenomenon known as ‘presenteeism’ where workers with health problems remain at work resulting in decreased productivity. Patients are ultimately impacted by poor mental health among their healthcare providers; low-quality care results in medication errors and suboptimal healthcare services to patients.
Causes and Contributing Factors
Conditions in the workplace are the major contributors to poor mental well-being among healthcare professionals. Conditions such as patient-to-provider abuse, workplace bullying and violence, excessive workloads, atypical working hours, poor workplace social support, and inadequate wages (effort-reward imbalance) are some of the main reasons for poor mental well-being among healthcare professionals (Gray et al., 1). These factors were heightened post the COVID era when workers were subjected to increased workloads and levels of stress.
Patient-to-provider abuse is one of the most prevalent contributory factors to poor mental health among healthcare workers. Patient-to-provider abuse refers to aggression on healthcare providers meted out by patients and their families (Chesire et al. 1664). Healthcare workers in both inpatient and outpatient settings are exposed to different forms of aggression in the workplace by patients and their families. Young patients are more likely to experience patient-to-provider abuse than their older colleagues. Despite the high prevalence of patient-to-provider abuse, this form of abuse is highly underreported in the healthcare system (Gray et al. 2). Increased incidences of patient-to-provider abuse results in poor mental well-being, decreased productivity, and decreased levels of patient care. Patient-to-provider abuse brings mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and increased anxiety (Chesire et al. 1664). Additionally, patient-to-provider abuse may result in physical harm to healthcare professionals.
Another cause of poor well-being and decreased mental health among healthcare professionals is workplace violence and bullying. Workplace violence and bullying refer to physical and emotional harm to employees. Workplace bullying negatively impacts the mental health of healthcare workers and the quality of healthcare services. Workplace bullying and violence are characterized by persistent harm caused by individual, cultural, and psychosocial factors (Gray et al. 1). Workplace bullying includes direct and indirect attacks. Direct attacks include mocking, cursing, and hitting, while indirect attacks include rumor spreading. Workplace violence and bullying result in increased stress levels for healthcare professionals.
The third cause of poor emotional well-being among healthcare providers is excessive workloads. Excessive workloads among healthcare personnel results in burnout. It is estimated that around 33% of healthcare workers are undergoing burnout at any time (De Hert 3). Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, a sense of lack of accomplishment, and depersonalization—burnout results in high turnover, poor satisfaction, and poor mental outcomes among healthcare professionals. Mental health outcomes of burnout include anxiety and depression.
Atypical working hours and inadequate wages exacerbate the effects of burnout (De Hert 4). Atypical working hours entail healthcare personnel working in shifts that differ from normal. Due to the nature of their jobs, healthcare workers are often forced to work atypical hours. These work schedules force workers to have poor social relationships with family and friends. Additionally, atypical working hours impact workers’ sleep patterns. These factors increase burnout and related mental health outcomes, such as depression and anxiety.
Inadequate wages are a factor of effort-reward imbalance where healthcare workers perceive a mismatch between their workloads and their short- and long-term goals. Aspects of efforts among healthcare workers are measured in terms of workload, responsibilities, time pressure, overtime, and disturbances. The reward is measured in salary, esteem, probability of promotion, management, and job security (De Hert 4). When the aspects of effort outweigh the aspects of reward, there is an increased probability of burnout among the workers, increasing anxiety and depression among healthcare workers.
The final causative factor for increased mental health problems among healthcare workers is poor workplace social support. Workplace social support is linked to all the other causative factors discussed above. The absence of workplace social support exacerbates all the factors above, resulting in increasingly poor mental health outcomes (Endo). Workplace social support refers to the availability of assistance provided to employees to cope with occupational stress. Workplace social support shows employees that their organizations value them. Lack of social support increases the intensity of stress factors in healthcare facilities, resulting in increased incidences and intensities of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
While workplace conditions account for the high prevalence of mental health problems among healthcare professionals, issues away from the workplace may also contribute to mental health problems among workers. Issues away from work that may contribute to poor mental health well-being among healthcare professionals include relationship issues, sexual problems, legal problems, illnesses, commuting pressures, caring for children and elderly relatives, and financial problems (Gray et al. 3). The issue listed above are major predictors of mental health status outside the workplace factors. Nonetheless, these factors can only be addressed through the individual efforts of affected workers. Policy-wide interventions are suitable for stressors such as workplace factors that affect many people at a given time.
Types of Mental Health Issues
The most common form of mental health problems among healthcare workers includes depression, anxiety, stress, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (De Hert 4). All the causes and contributory factors discussed in the section above result in these mental health problems. These mental health issues have increased over recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, where healthcare workers have been forced to work for long hours, with high workloads, and with a risk of infection in the line of duty. In addition to physical exhaustion, these factors have resulted in mental exhaustion and worker issues. Estimates indicate that more than a quarter of all healthcare workers developed mental health issues (Saragih et al. 1). The main mental health issues affecting healthcare workers during the pandemic were PTSD, anxiety, depression, and distress.
Research studies on the prevalence of mental health issues have mainly focused on nurses. According to Saragih et al. (3), of 53 784 participants involved across 38 studies, 43.7% were nurses, 27.9% were doctors, and 7.0% were allied health workers. The review found that around 40% of healthcare workers suffer from anxiety, 37% suffer from depression, 37% suffer from distress, and 49% suffer from PTSD. These statistics show the high prevalence of mental health issues among healthcare personnel. Improvement in the well-being of these workers, patient safety and satisfaction, and healthcare facility outcomes necessitates a reduction of these proportions.
Impact of Poor Mental Health
Poor mental health among healthcare workers is characterized by anxiety, depression, and PTSD. These disorders result in poor productivity among affected workers, both in and out of work. Consequently, poor mental health negatively impacts entire aspects of the lives of healthcare professionals. Hence, poor mental health well-being results in poor outcomes in healthcare service provision (Endo). Mental health problems among workers are associated with low professionalism, poor quality of care, high risk of patient safety incidents, medical and medication errors, and low patient satisfaction. These factors indicate that, besides workers, patients are negatively impacted by poor mental health in healthcare workers.
The paragraphs above indicate how poor mental health negatively impacts healthcare professionals and their patients. Consequently, healthcare facilities are also negatively impacted by poor mental health. Decreased productivity and work quality result in revenue loss for healthcare facilities (Melnyk 42). Additionally, patients need help accessing healthcare services from facilities with poor patient satisfaction. Also, healthcare facilities are impacted by poor mental health among their staff through increased patient turnover. Facilities are forced to incur increased losses due to additional costs spent on hiring and training new workforce members (Gray et al. 1).
Significance of Research
The effects of mental health problems addressed above indicate the significance of research on the causes of poor mental health and their solutions among healthcare workers. Poor mental health among workers results in negative outcomes for the workers, their patients, and their healthcare facilities (Saragih et al. 3). Conversely, increased mental well-being results in increased work satisfaction and productivity among healthcare workers. As a result, patients receive reduced safety incidences hence increased care quality. Additionally, healthcare facilities experience lower turnover rates, better public image, and benefit from increased productivity among their workers. Research on causes and solutions is essential to provide healthcare facilities and administrators with knowledge on improving workplace conditions. Through research, healthcare administrators receive concrete recommendations to reduce patient-to-provider abuse and improve the well-being of their staff.
Counterargument
There is a consensus that healthcare professionals like nurses require psychological and physical wellness. Consequently, there is a lack of credible counterarguments to healthcare professionals’ need for increased mental well-being. A possible counterargument to this problem is that nurses rarely ask for psychological help (Endo). Professional caregivers rarely focus on their personal needs for care; instead, they fully focus on providing care for others. Healthcare workers are often regarded as heroes, a tag that discourages them from seeking help; since heroes do not need help, they are the ones who offer help. Nonetheless, this lack of asking is not evidence of optimal psychological well-being among nurses. Instead of taking it as such, healthcare administrators should conduct surveys in their facilities to ascertain the correct stress levels among their personnel.
In her article, Endo states that hospitals, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, have emphasized nurses’ physical well-being while neglecting their psychological well-being. Since it is prudent to protect the physical well-being of healthcare providers, their psychological well-being must also be protected (Melnyk 33). A holistic approach to nursing affairs results in wholesome development and well-being among professionals. In the article, Endo contends that psychological personal protective equipment (PPEs) should be provided to healthcare professionals to safeguard their mental health and well-being. Proposed methods of improving the staff’s mental well-being align with the proposals in this paper; reducing nurse workload, active interventions, and destigmatizing mental support.
Expert Solutions
The issue of mental health well-being among healthcare providers has been increasing awareness over recent years. Consequently, mental health experts have proposed various solutions to the problem of poor mental health among healthcare workers. Strategies for increased mental health well-being among healthcare professionals can be largely grouped into individual and collective approaches. Individual approaches entail practicing self-care through self-awareness, self-compassion, and altruism. Mindfulness and stress management are core aspects of self-care (Endo). Healthcare workers must divert from the practice where they always put others first; despite risking their physical and mental well-being. Healthcare workers need to balance their personal needs with those of their patients. Healthcare facilities must provide supportive techniques and tools to their workers to assist them in self-care management.
In addition to self-care, experts have proposed organization-wide interventions for improving mental well-being among healthcare providers. Healthcare organizations can protect their employees’ mental well-being by creating positive work environments. Positive work environments attract new employees, facilitate their adaptation, enable them to perform effectively, and encourage them to remain in the workforce (Melnyk 44). Organizational leadership can create better environments by reducing the stigmatization of mental health and providing necessary changes in their workplace structure to promote mental well-being.
Organizations can create policies to address the causes of poor mental health among healthcare workers. Social support in the work can be improved by monitoring health and providing treatment to workers, and providing psychosocial support and information on self-management. Additionally, organizations can promote self-care by initiating mandatory breaks, starting meetings on time, and providing workers access to silent rooms. Organizations may also utilize peer-to-peer groups to protect the mental well-being of their employees. Such groups provide healthcare workers with a platform to share their experiences with their colleagues, providing suggestions for better management of these issues.
Levels of burnout among workers can be reduced through the improvement of working conditions and work patterns. Healthcare administrators can initiate limits to work shifts to prevent overworking among their workers. Additionally, healthcare facilities can formulate sick and parental leave policies that fail to put an undue burden on colleagues. Telemedicine and new technologies provide the potential to perform some functions in healthcare systems, reducing the workload on regular workers (De Hert 4). Organizations can negotiate wage rates that reflect employees’ responsibilities to reduce perceptions of effort-reward imbalance. Organizations can also create short-term mood boosters and incentives, such as posters and free lunches may also assist in reducing day-to-day stress levels among healthcare workers. Such initiatives have been widely adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide healthcare workers with temporary acknowledgment and distraction from the worry of protecting their health and well-being while in service.
Expert research and opinions have also resulted in suggestions to reduce patient-to-provider abuse, workplace bullying, and violence. Codes of conduct can be formulated to prevent workplace bullying and violence. The codes of conduct can be used to establish strict anti-violence policies in healthcare settings (Gray et al. 3). Organizations should provide workers with support and encouragement to bring forward cases of bullying and violence before human resource departments. This department, in turn, can use the codes of conduct to spell out the consequences of workplace bullying and violence. The presence of well-spelled-out consequences is effective in deterring workplace bullying and violence.
The nature of patient-to-provider abuse poses a unique challenge to healthcare providers and administrators. Healthcare providers cannot set internal rules to guide patient behavior. Nonetheless, healthcare institutions ought to look after the well-being of their workers just as they look after the well-being of their patients (Chesire et al. 1664). Healthcare institutions can set and enforce reasonable limits on patient behavior. Additionally, institutions can set simple, clear, reasonable, and enforceable consequences for abusive patients and their families, such as calling security. Additionally, healthcare facilities can partner with other stakeholders to champion worker rights legislation, calling for enforceable consequences for patients and families who engage in provider abuse. Supportive organization cultures promote reporting of patient-to-provider abuse, resulting in the creation of safer work environments.
Solution Proposal
The sections above show that poor mental health well-being negatively impacts all healthcare system stakeholders, including healthcare administrators, personnel, and patients. Consequently, a solution must be sought to improve the healthcare staff’s mental health and well-being. Numerous research studies have been conducted on possible interventions for improving mental well-being among healthcare personnel (Melnyk 24). Based on the nature of the causes of poor mental well-being among healthcare workers, a single intervention cannot be used to solve the problem. Instead, healthcare institutions must formulate and enforce policies that address all causes of poor provider well-being.
Based on the expert solutions suggested in the section above, the proposed solution for poor mental health and well-being in this paper is initiating a mental wellness policy in healthcare institutions. These healthcare policies should provide direction on preventing workplace violence and bullying, prevention of patient-to-provider abuse, improved effort-to-reward balance, creation and enforcement of safe staffing ratios, and initiation of workplace social support strategies.
Impact of Staff Mental Health Well-being
Increased well-being positively impacts the staff, patients, and entire healthcare facilities. Mental health well-being results in increased job satisfaction and productivity among healthcare workers (Gray et al. 3). Additionally, increased mental well-being is an indication that healthcare workers are experiencing reduced workplace violence and bullying, reduced patient-to-provider abuse, improved effort-to-reward balance, have safe staffing ratios, and are assisted at their workplaces through social support initiatives.
Patients and healthcare facilities also benefit from increased well-being among healthcare workers. Patients have improved outcomes when healthcare providers have improved well-being. Mentally healthy workers have increased productivity, increased professionalism, and provided a better quality of service (Melnyk 27). Consequently, increased well-being among healthcare workers results in reduced medical and medication errors, increased patient safety, and increased patient satisfaction.
Healthcare facilities benefit from increased workers’ well-being through increased productivity and patient satisfaction—additionally, they record reduced worker turnover rates when their workers’ well-being increases. Consequently, healthcare facilities have increased revenue through increased patients and reduced expenditure on training new employees. Hence, healthcare facilities need to make a conscious effort to improve the mental well-being of their workers. Investing in their personnel’s mental well-being results in improved health and increased ability to work.
Feasibility of Potential Solution
Most healthcare institutions can feasibly implement the potential solution for formulating comprehensive mental health wellness. Healthcare facilities have already formulated and implemented some such policies in their institutions. However, the formulation of policies for some causative factors while ignoring other factors fails to adequately solve the problem of mental health problems among healthcare workers (Melnyk 65). Nonetheless, as these initiatives have been applied in healthcare institutions, comprehensive policies addressing all causative factors can also be applied.
Policy formulation and implementation are common in all organizations, including healthcare organizations. Consequently, healthcare facilities can formulate comprehensive policies with relative ease. Collaboration between various stakeholders assists in the process of policy formulation. Once the policies are formulated, healthcare organizations can use their human resource teams to enforce them. Human resource teams are tasked with protecting the well-being of workers. Additionally, the policies can be made public to all stakeholders, for each stakeholder knows their part in promoting mental well-being among healthcare staff.
Formulating and enforcing policies to promote patient mental health and well-being remains feasible. Conversely, the lack of formulation of such policies is unfeasible for most healthcare facilities as it may result in poor worker productivity and high employee turnover (Melnyk 32). Implementing such policies remains the best strategy healthcare facilitators and administrators can use; for the well-being of their patients, workers, and the entire organization.
Assessment of Actions Needed to Implement the Solution
Several actions will need to be taken to implement the proposed solution successfully. First, administrators and leaders will need to recognize that mental health wellness is important for their employees, their patients, and the successful operation of their organizations. Second, leaders need to conduct surveys in their health facilities to determine which causative factors are most prevalent in causing poor mental health among their workers. A part of this process will entail holding discussions with various healthcare professionals to have an accurate understanding of the magnitude of each causative factor.
Third, healthcare managers will hold consultative meetings with their stakeholders to formulate policies based on the causative factors most prevalent in their settings. Aspects of these policies are illustrated in this paper’s ‘expert solutions’ section. The causative and contributory factors with the highest magnitude should be given the most attention in policy formulation. Nonetheless, all of the causative factors should be addressed throughout the process. The policy-making process should include new strategies to improve staffing ratios, improve employee remuneration to create a better effort-to-reward balance and create social support programs within the institutions (Melnyk 37). Additionally, the policy-making process should involve the creation of a code of conduct to guide employee and patient behavior to reduce workplace violence and bullying and reduce patient-to-provider abuse.
Once these policies are formulated, the stakeholders should decide on ways and timelines of enforcing them. The healthcare facility will be responsible for implementing policies related to staffing ratios, effort-reward-balance, and social support. The human resource department will be responsible for enforcing policies on workplace bullying and violence, and patient-to-provider abuse (Gray et al. 3). Once these policies have been formulated and enforcement criteria reached. The healthcare teams should decide on appropriate means to evaluate the efficacy of their solutions.
Stakeholder Support and Engagement
Stakeholder support and engagement are crucial for implementing policies and interventions to improve mental well-being among healthcare professionals. Continuous engagement of all stakeholders is essential for successfully implementing these interventions. Additionally, all stakeholders need to have unity of purpose to increase the probability of success in implementing the intervention. Conflict between stakeholders results in problems that discourage the successful implementation of solution proposals (Saragih et al. 4). Healthcare employees encompass one of the most important stakeholder groups. The healthcare personnel’s opinions need to be considered since the proposed interventions will directly affect the professionals. Lack of consideration of the opinions of healthcare employees is likely to result in the ineffective implementation of these interventions.
Evaluation of Solution Efficacy
Proposed solutions for increasing mental well-being in healthcare should be sustainable and long-lasting. Evaluation of the solutions provides an outlook on their sustainability and longevity. The solution of comprehensive policy formulation can be assessed by conducting surveys before and after implementing the solution. Before implementation of the solution, the survey should assess the prevalence of mental health issues within the healthcare workers’ population, workers’ productivity, patient satisfaction, and revenue collected by the company. These variables should again be measured six months and a year after the implementation of the solution. A change in data indicating increased mental health wellness, employee satisfaction, and productivity will indicate a successful intervention.
Additionally, increased patient safety, increased patient satisfaction, and increased revenue will be indicative of success in policy formulation and implementation. Otherwise, the policy would have failed in fulfilling its objective. Increased revenue is also indicative that the policy is sustainable, hence able to achieve longevity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, mental well-being is an integral factor among healthcare workers. Mental well-being results in positive outcomes for healthcare workers, patients, and organizations. Mental well-being results in increased satisfaction and productivity among workers. Patients have reduced safety issues, the better quality of care, and higher satisfaction when their caregivers have adequate mental well-being. Despite these advantages, workers in the healthcare sector continue recording a high prevalence of mental health issues. This paper proposes that leaders in healthcare institutions should take conscious action toward improving the mental wellness of their employees.
Works Cited
Chesire, David J., et al. “Dimensions of hospital workplace violence: Patient violence towards the healthcare team.” Journal of Clinical Nursing 31.11-12 (2022): 1662-1668.
De Hert, Stefan. “Burnout in Healthcare Workers: Prevalence, Impact and Preventative Strategies.” Local and Regional Anesthesia vol. 13 171-183. October 28, 2020, doi:10.2147/LRA.S240564
Endo, Jo, A. “Why is “psychological PPE” important for the Health Care Workforce?” Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2020, August 13). Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/why-is-psychological-ppe-important-for-the-health-care-workforce
Gray, Patricia, et al. “Workplace-Based Organizational Interventions Promoting Mental Health and Happiness among Healthcare Workers: A Realist Review.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health .vol. 16, 22 4396. November 11, 2019, doi:10.3390/ijerph16224396
Melnyk, Bernadette Mazurek, et al. “Promoting nurse mental health.” American Nurse 16.1 (2021): 20-69.
Saragih, Ita Daryanti, et al. “Global prevalence of mental health problems among healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis.” International Journal of Nursing Studies. Vol. 121 (2021): 104002. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.104002
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