Nurse Burnout

Nursing is considered one of the most stressful professions, which can affect not only the nurse in a serious manner but also the patients. Stress of a job is a response to continuous exposure to emotional and interpersonal stressors. Nurses having the responsibility for the health of others are under enormous amounts of pressure of different kinds of stress. According to the Institute of Medicine, the work environment and its effect on health care employees plays an important role in patient outcomes (IOM, ). There are multiple psychological responses to stressful work environments including, the feeling of not being good at ones job, which is all considered nurse burnout. The reasons for nurses having these types of psychological responses

The emotional, physical, and mental aspects of dealing with life and death trials and tribulations, along with the very demanding and stressful work environment can lead to burnout. Due to high patient acuity in the intensive care unit it can lead to emotional exhaustion, which is caring for two patients and all of their facets of patient care and are required to make split second decisions. Another factor that cause burnout amongst intensive care unit nurses is moral distress. For example, an all too often situation that intensive care unit nurses run into is the dilemma that the person that is legally able to make decisions for a patient wants something done that would prolong life and the nurse who is caring directly to this patient knows what the final outcome will be and wish for providing comfort care (Epstein & Delgado, 2010). When families choose to prolong a patient’s life with aggressive treatments, it is one of the most stressful situations an intensive care unit nurses can experience, especially if the nurse knows that the patient wishes otherwise. Intensive care unit nurses also take on the responsibility of not only caring for the patients, but also all who are closely related to the patient. We are guilty of taking on these families pain and suffering. In result many nurses are unable to cope and become disconnected from patients and team members. Many times the feeling of not being able to be effective and have a voice because the nurse’s voice and thoughts are not valued about the patient’s plan of care, by the physician is also an important factor that can lead to nurse