Health care is a very stressful field. When a nurses job stress turns into distress, and they can no longer cope with the day to day stress of giving patients care, the patients suffer greatly. A nurse's job satisfaction directly impacts his or her patient's satisfaction with their care. Nurses want to help people. Helping and caring for people is a huge drive for most people to go into nursing. When nurses become depleted of emotional resources it affects all parts of their life and especially their job performance. A nurse who is suffering from compassion fatigue will often avoid a traumatized patient. That traumatized patient may need exactly the skills that particular nurse has. Each nurse brings a different set of strengths and weaknesses to their unit's team. If a …show more content…
nurse begins avoiding care of certain patients that not only affects the team dynamic, but also something important may be missed in that patient's care because it is not a strength of the other nurses. A nurse who has compassion fatigue can also contribute to an overall negative attitude on their unit, causing other nurses to leave the unit. Compassion fatigue can cause many symptoms that then can lead to ineffective patient care and poor patient outcomes.
The manifestation of compassion fatigue can be dangerous to the very people the nurse works to care for so tirelessly. The outside world sees that nurses consistently put their patient's needs first. There have been many poems, blog posts, and articles written about nurses who do not eat, use the bathroom, or sleep, all to care for a stranger. This characteristic of nurses, to put others first, is what makes them so good at being caregivers. Without any thought, for themselves, nurses jump in to help in all times of need, keep calm in the face of disaster, and make sure things are taken care of in stressful times. A nurse with compassion fatigue will still put others first because that is who the nurse is at his or her most basic level, a caregiver. The reason compassion fatigue is such an important professional nursing issue is that of the side effects nurses suffer from. The symptoms of compassion fatigue cause a direct effect on the patients, co-workers, and family of a nurse suffering from compassion fatigue. Physical, and mental, exhaustion can cause devastating medication
errors. Emotional depletion can cause a nurse to call in sick to work causing short staffing on their unit. Lack of focus can impair nursing judgment to the point a vital lab value gets disregarded. Memory loss can cause important information to not be communicated. A nurse cares for the whole patient. This means a nurse meets a patient's physical, mental, and emotional needs. Nurses also care for their patient's family. The fact that nurses care for their patient's whole health means that nurses must also care for their own whole selves. A nurse must make their own mental, physical, and emotional health a priority. Nurses also need a healthy, and strong support system in place. Nurses need to stay vigilant with self-care and self-evaluation. The nursing administration needs to continually evaluate stressful factors on their unit and help their nurses feel empowered to take care of themselves. Compassion fatigue is both preventable and treatable. Compassion fatigue as a diagnosis is significantly important to all aspects of health care because a nurse who cannot effectively care for patients causes a breakdown of the health care structure leading to a downward spiral for health care staff and patients alike.
Often time, nurses has been viewed by patients, their family members and the medical team as basic emotional care givers, pill crushers or cart pullers and not as healthcare professionals who are more interesting in health promotion, disease prevention and better patient outcomes. They also often forget the emotional, physical, mental, and caring part that is involved with the profession. And to make matters worse, nurses are continued to be viewed as a threat by doctors more than ever before especially with the opening of Nurse Practitioners programs.
It can be related to feelings of hopelessness and lack of meaning, anxiety, decreased ability to concentrate, irritability, insomnia, emotional numbing, lack of empathy, and escapist activities (such a self-medicating with drugs and alcohol). This is in direct opposition to the idea that nurses would be responsive to an insightful of their clients needs. Dennis Portnoy wrote “Compassion fatigue was often triggered by patient care situations in which nurses believed that their actions would “not make a difference” or “never seemed to be enough”. He further elaborated in the article Burnout and compassion Fatigue that nurses who experienced this syndrome also did so because of systemic issues such as; overtime worked, high patient acuity, high patient census, heavy patient assignments, high acuity, overtime and extra workdays, personal issues, lack of energy and lack of experience (Portnoy, 2011). These issues, interfere with the nurses' ability to identify with the patient and to tune in to important issues and obscure symptoms. Once consideration is that nurses can use Orlando’s theory to identify and address their own needs and respond with the same level of consideration to their own needs in order to prevent a burn out
One of the most serious issues in nursing, that can affect a nurses career is nursing burn- out. According to the article “Where have all the nurses gone”, current nurses that are practicing, report high rates of job dissatisfaction (which is part of burn out) and 1 of 5 nurses may quit nursing in the next 5 years (Dworkin, 2002). Burnout is associated with nurses not coming in to work, not feeling satisfied when doing their job, high turnover rates and a lack of commitment to the work (Katisfaraki, 2013). If a nurse becomes burned- out, they may not take care of their patients as well and could make mistakes with medication administration. A study performed in the United States by Dr. Jeannie Cimiottti, shows that hospitals with high burn-out rates among nurses have higher levels UTI’s, and surgical infections (World, 2012). Nursing burnout not only affects the nurse, but it also affects the patient, the nurses’ colleagues, and the nurses’ family; nursing burn out often leads to emotional exhaustion and depression, that can effect relations and communication between the nurse effected and the person they are communicating with. This paper will cover what burn-out is, who is susceptible to burn out, and treatment and prevent nursing burn out.
Compassion fatigue is a complex form of secondary traumatic stress often experienced by nurses and other health care professionals due to their stressful work environment. Compassion fatigue is extreme exhaustion that penetrates all aspects of one’s wellbeing, including the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects of life (Murphy-Ende, 2012). Dealing with children who are both chronically ill or in palliative care is known to be extremely stressful. Not only are nurses faced with dealing with the physical symptoms of their patients, they also must attend to their fragile emotional state and be of assistance to their anxious family members. Oncologic diagnoses can put a child and their family into turmoil. Since the nurse is the first, and most constant point of contact, they are often the ones who become responsible for ensuring well-being of the entire family throughout the ...
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.
The definition of compassion is “sympathetic consciousness of another’s distress with a desire to alleviate it” (Merriam-Webster dictionary, 2011). Compassion and the desire to nourish may be the deciding factors that would lead one to pursue a career in nursing. Nurses over the span of their career will have extensive exposure to trauma, pain, and unfortunate situations. Workplace stressors such as scheduling and increasing workload along with repeated exposure to the hardships of others predisposes caregivers, especially nurses, to develop a unique type of burnout labeled compassion fatigue (Joinson 1992). Compassion fatigue develops when a nurse unintentionally takes on the misfortune, anxiety, pain, and trauma of the patients they care for.
It was not until 1980 when the DSM- III was published that PTSD was officially recognized as an anxiety disorder for victims of traumatic incidents (TIs) and not until 1994 when DSM- IV was published it included the witnesses as well. For psychological traits to be classified as PTSD they must satisfy the following: exposure to TI directly causes peritraumatic distress not long after the event, currently re-experiencing TI, avoiding triggers to memories of the scenario with general unresponsiveness, and hyperactivity (Lavoie et al., 2016). With the TI, memories of the event are intruding upon the daily function of the individual through images, thoughts, tastes, sounds, and smells with the flashbacks correlating
Nurses want to give complete and quality care, but are unable to, due to the constant needs of their workload and inadequate staffing. They have to prioritize their patients needs based on the most critical treatments first. Then whatever time is left, they fill in what treatments they can. Some reasons that nursing treatments are missed include: too few staff, time required for the nursing intervention, poor use of existing staff resources and ineffective delegation.” (Kalisch, 2006) Many nurses become emotionally stressed and unsatisfied with their jobs. (Halm et al., 2005; Kalisch,
The nursing profession is one of the most physically, emotionally, and mentally taxing career fields. Working long shifts, placing other’s needs before your own, dealing with sickness and death on a regular basis, and working in a high stress environment are all precursors to developing occupational burnout in the nursing profession. Burnout refers to physical, emotional and mental exhaustion, which can lead to an emotionally detached nurse, who feels hopeless, apathetic, and unmotivated. Burnout extends beyond the affected nurse and begins to affect the care patients receive. Researchers have found that hospitals with high burnout rates have lower patient satisfaction scores (Aiken et al 2013). There are various measures that nurses can take
The nursing theories that are currently in place in the emergency room to promote professional growth and development are vital; however, there are other nursing theories that could be implemented to help improve professional growth and development. A theory that should be implemented to more effectively promote professional growth and development is Orem’s theory of self-care deficit. Orem’s theory is considered a “realistic reflection on nursing practice” (McEwen & Wills, 2014, p. 146). If the nurse is not taking care of him or herself, “stress [can] accumulate [and the] nurse can … become angry, exhausted, depressed, and sleepless” (Ruff & Hoffman, 2016, p. 8). By the nurse having these feelings he or she is not able to take care of him
(2015) implies that the unit manager together with work environment, greatly influences the nurse’s overall job satisfaction, and has little to do with the stress of caring for patients. Furthermore, studies show that stronger relationships amongst management, staff, patients and families, allows for bonding between each component of the healthcare pyramid and makes the job more “enjoyable”, thereby reducing the emotional fatigue associated with burnout. Research also states that changes in organizational policies such as nurse to patient ratio, short staffing, etc., reduce this risk (Australian Nursing Journal,
...e with compassion fatigue will be of no use to help with the patient’s emotional and spiritual needs. The emotions of both the nurse and the patient needs to be met in order to establish good communication and compassionate care between the two.
Poor staffing stresses every nurse and makes them despite what they once loved to do. Nurses are overworked and because of that they may not provide adequate patient care.
The pediatric oncology unit has become a heavily studied area for those interested in prevention of compassion fatigue, burnout, and identification of those character traits that offer increased resilience. Nurses are expected to maintain professionalism and appropriate work-life balance but this may become a difficult task on a unit where children have a chronic, intensive, and potentially life-ending condition. Nurses become close to the patient and their family and when death occurs they too may feel a great sense of intense grief and loss. The acknowledgment of this grief and the promotion of adequate self-care habits, work-life divisions, and the ability to recognize when help may be needed are amongst the most important means in prevention of burnout and compassion fatigue. In addition to utilization of positive coping skills by the nurse a responsibility by the organization is also necessary to prevent staff burnout and turnover. The organization is responsible for acknowledgement of a loss on the unit. Presentation of prompt and anonymous counseling services to everyone on the unit following a death and regularly on high-risk units is just one of the many ways an organization can continue to decrease the loss of good nurses to compassion fatigue and
Compassion fatigue is defined as “The emotional residue or strains of exposure to working with those suffering from the consequences of traumatic events” (The American Institute of Stress, n.d.). Compassion fatigue occurs when healthcare workers, especially those who work with patients one-on-one daily, feel the emotional stress of their jobs starting to wear on them. For example, a person who works with a cancer patient and watches that patient worsen and finally pass away, may experience great emotional pain. Dealing with stressful situations over time could also cause compassion fatigue. One way to prevent compassion fatigue is through implementation of Schwartz rounds. “Schwartz rounds are not 'problem solving'. Instead, the focus is on the emotional experiences of staff caring for patients and they allow staff to explore, in an environment that is safe and confidential, situations that confront them.” (Thompson, A. (2013). Schwartz rounds are like support groups for healthcare workers. They allow healthcare providers to share their struggles as caregivers and solve their strugg...