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Consequences of fatigue and burnout in nursing
Consequences of fatigue and burnout in nursing
Consequences of fatigue and burnout in nursing
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Nurse Fatigue And Patient Safety
Name
Institution Affiliation Clinical Question
Fatigue is where an individual is exhausted physically or mentally hindering them from functioning up to their full capacity. Fatigue is more than being weary since its normal to get tired mentally and physically but when you are unable to continue with your worth then that is referred to as fatigue. It is an issue that has been connected to stress in various working environments and always lead to reduced performance. The fatigued person is not able to make the right decisions, has a low response time and cannot think critically. Fatigue can also bring in negative effects to a person’s health.
Patient’s safety is referred to as the avoidance of errors and the effects that are related to health issues (Mennella &
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The sources were from the pub med, Google scholar, American nurses association and joint commission. In my refinement decision, I used limits in my decision which includes academic journals, subject-English, publisher-ANA, International journal of nurses, MedSurg nursing.
Conclusion
There is an overwhelming evidence that shows the implication that fatigue caused by lack of sleep from the nurses especially when they are made to extend their shifts to more than 12 hours successively. Fatigued nurses put the lives of the patients at huge risks. There is need for change in the medical sector which would be ensured through cooperation from the policymakers and the administrators in charge of the nurses and their schedules. The working cultures should be changed to relieve the nurses from the extreme working conditions that prevent them from providing the best care to their patients.
References
AS., C. (n.d.). Preventing Health Care–Associated Infections. In NCBI book
Wolf, Zane Robinson & Hughes, Ronda G (n.d.). Error Reporting and Disclosure. Retrieved on March 2014 from world wide web at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2652
Inadequate rest which results in fatigue has major implications on the health and safety of registered nurses and can compromise patient care. Nurses often work three to four 12 hour shift a week without taking any breaks while on duty. They often have difficult workloads and challenges which can take a toll and impact patient care. I will be taking a look at nurse fatigue and the impact it has on the nurse’s wellbeing, work, and patient care.
Many nurses, including myself, face the issue of understaffing and having too much of a workload during one shift. Nurses get burnt out more quickly when working on an understaffed unit. The patient also suffers by not receiving the care they deserve. The issue of nurse-patient ratio is a touchy area
A considerable amount of literature has been published on the impact of working hours (8 vs. 12 hour shifts) on fatigue among the nurses. These studies revealed that twelve-hour shifts increase the risk of fatigue, reduce the level of alertness and performance, and therefore reduce the safety aspect compared to eight-hour shifts (Mitchell and Williamson, 1997; Dorrian et al., 2006; Dembe et al., 2009; Tasto et al., 1978). Mills et al. (1982) found that the risk of fatigues and performance errors are associated with the 12-hour shifts. Beside this, Jostone et al. (2002) revealed that nurses who are working for long hours are providing hasty performance with increased possibility of errors.
I think shortages of nurses can also be a factor in why nurses are overworked and stressed. In most hospitals you can’t even tell if there is a nurse shortage, the nurses run around from patient to patient I’m trying to still provide the same quality care. My aunt is a registered nurse for Northeast medical center and I asked her out of the previously 11 listed reasons nurses are stressed which do you experience the most. She replied, “I have to say that I experience number one which is work overload the most. When I started working as a nurse 37 years ago there were three separate shifts throughout a day and there’s could work instead of the two 7am-7pm. The nursed patient ratio was a lot lower we got to spend time with the patients we had during the day and provide individual attention. You didn’t feel overwhelmed because the hospital had enough nurses. Now they nurses doing e same amount of work as two or three nurses combined, and are still expected to do
...hological preparation. After a nurse is done working their regular shift being forced to work overtime can out them a greater right of medical mistake in part due to fatigue and tiredness consequently putting the patient at high risk of complications.
In the recent past, nursing has come to the forefront as a popular career amongst students across the globe. The demand for nurses has kept increasing gradually over the years. In fact, the number of registered nurses does not meet the demand of the private and public health sector. This phenomenon has resulted in a situation where the available registered nurses have to work extra hours in order to meet the patients’ needs. With this in mind, the issue of nurse fatigue has come up as a common problem in nursing. According to the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), nurse fatigue is “a feeling of tiredness” that penetrates a persons physical, mental and emotional realms limiting their ability to function normally. Fatigue does not just involve sleepiness as has been assumed before. It involves utter exhaustion that is not easily mitigated through rest. When nurses ignore the signs of fatigue, they risk the development of chronic fatigue and other health problems that may not be easily treated. Additionally, fatigue may cause nurses to lose more time at work as they may have to be away from work for several days to treat it. The issue of nurse fatigue has permeated the nursing profession to the extent of causing errors in the work performed by nurses. Fatigue causes a decrease in a nurse’s ability to make accurate decisions for themselves and their patients. It is therefore important to find ways to curb nurse fatigue such that it is no longer a problem. Nurse fatigue is a danger to the patients, organizations and to the nurses themselves and must be mitigated adequately.
Alarm fatigue is a growing problem that causes nurses to feel overwhelmed and not perform to the best of their abilities. Many people don’t understand the concept of alarm fatigue until they are in a hospital and hear the different noises going on first hand. Alarm fatigue occurs when nurses or other health care members have sensory overload due to the alarms, which then lead to ignoring the alarms raising concerns with patient safety (Horkan, 2014).
Burnout is a highly unusual type of stress disorder that is essentially characterized by emotional exhaustion, lack of empathy with patients, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishments. The nature of the work that healthcare practitioners perform predisposes them to emotional exhaustion. On the other hand, the lack of empathy towards patients is caused by the nurses feeling that they are underpaid and unappreciated. Numerous researches have associated burnout with the increasing rate of nurse turnover. This paper explores the causes of burnouts in nurses as well as what can be done to prevent the them.
In recent years, there’s evidence to suggest that mental health nurses experience stress and burned out related to their work, Stress, as an result of stressful workplaces (Bernard et al,2000).
Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.
Patients Safety is the most crucial about healthcare sector around the world. It is defined as ‘the prevention of patients harm’ (Kohn et al. 2000). Even thou patient safety is shared among organization members, Nurses play a key role, as they are liable for direct and continuous patients care. Nurses should be capable of recognizing the risk of patients and address it to the other multi disciplinary on time.
A high workload has negative implications for nurses as well. Consequences of heavy workload include stress, burnout, and dissatisfaction, thus affecting motivation for quality patient care. Furthermore, nursing overload was also associated with increased absenteeism (as cited in Fasoli & Haddock, 2010, p. 2).
In conclusion, nurses are overworked. They are overworked due to long twelve hours plus shifts, shortages of nurses whether they call out sick or the hospital did not hire enough nurses and even stress from the job. Being overworked is not good for anyone and with nurses, it can affect them physical, mentally and emotionally. The negative effects not only affects the nurse but can also affect their
Lippincott , Williams, & Wilkins, (2012). Sentinel event alert spotlights nurse fatigue. Clinical Rounds, 42(3), 27-29. doi: 10.1097/01.NURSE.0000411416.14033.f5