Nurse Burnout Analysis

Introduction

Due to the continuous nature of patient care, many areas of the nursing profession rely on shift work to maintain 24-hour staffing. According to the Institute for Work and Health, shift work has been defined as “employment with anything other than a regular daytime work schedule” (2012). While many nurses work one specific shift, such as days shifts or nights shifts, many work rotating shifts, in which nurses are scheduled to work a combination of day, evening, and night shifts (Walsh, 2013). They may work forward shift rotations, in which they work a day to night shifts in succession, or they may work reverse shift rotations, in which they transition from night to day shifts (Institute for Work and Health, 2012). A nurse working a shift rotation may transition between shifts over a period of days or a period of weeks. Although some areas still utilize eight hour shifts, most hospital systems have transitioned to 12-hour shifts over the past two decades . There has been concern that 12-hour shift rotations are contributing to burnout and nurse fatigue. Burnout is defined as extensive

Nurses who work 12-hour shifts may often need to stay up to 13 or 14 hours depending on staffing and patient needs, and patient satisfaction levels are significantly lower when their nurses work longer than 13 hours (Aiken, Sloan, & Stimpfel, 2012). When nurses work longer than 13 hours, patients are more likely to report dissatisfaction with their care (Aiken, Sloan, & Stimpfel, 2012). The longer nurse are at work, the less likely they are to engage in appropriate hand hygiene, which can contribute to patient infection rates (Dai et al., 2013). Unsurprisingly, Nurses who work shifts longer than 12 hours who are more likely to experience burnout, which is also correlated with higher rates of hospital-acquired urinary tract infections in patients (Aiken et al.,