Healthcare is a sector that is the most intensively exposed to stress and emotional exhaustion or burnout. Medical workers deal with patients’ health problems that imply constant mental pressure and a high level of responsibility for a professional. The problem of low staffing in the industry depends on the emotional atmosphere in the workplace. Numerous studies found that nurses, especially those working in intensive care “experience higher levels of stress-related burnout” in comparison to other medical workers (Khamisa, Peltzer, & Oldenburg, 2013, p. 1). Such a tendency leads to nursing understaffing, increased workload, turnover and subsequent decrease of the patient-to-nurse ratio (Van den Heede et al., 2013). Therefore, patient care suffers from the errors in treatment and the low level of service quality provided by nurses. Consequently, the poor performance of medical workers might increase morbidity and mortality rates and lower the standards of healthcare practice.
Self-Care Nursing Theory
The growing rates of understaffing in nursing take their roots in the emotionally and psychically intense working environment that leads to various adverse outcomes. The burnout is resembled in decreasing of emotional energy, pessimistic demeanor and attitude to professional accomplishments (Khamisa et al., 2013). This problem needs to be applied with decisive measures and interventions grounding on valid nursing theory. One of the most efficient approaches applicable to the issue of nursing understaffing is self-care nursing theory. It is an application of the concept of self-care as a crucial element in nursing ensuring people to “sustain life and health” (Alliggod, 2013, p.222). This theory concerns the personal awareness of the individual under treatment about the state of their health condition (Alligood, 2013). It can be applied as a theoretical framework for the project due to its potential to raise nurses’ awareness of the possible individual ways to overcome difficulties and stay in the profession. When adjusted to the therapy of nurses exposed to burnout at the workplace, self-care theory might be addressed as the educational intervention aimed at the introduction of effective strategies and procedures for burnout minimization.
Proposed Implementation Plan with Outcome Measures
Nursing understaffing is caused by the stressful workload of the profession. Since nursing burnout has a potential to be harmful to patient safety, it is vital to carefully consider the implementation of procedures aimed at the minimization of burnout rates among nurses. The health condition of nurses occupied in acute care hospitals is endangered. The quality of their performance reflects their psychological well-being. In case of negative attitude to the accomplishments, the nurses neglect their professional responsibilities and undermine patients’ safety. That is why it is essential to supply the employees suffering from the emotional exhaustion with professional therapeutic practices.
According to the implementation plan within this project, targeted institutions will include local primary hospitals and the intensive care units, in particular. The participants will take part in the project on a voluntary basis. The professional therapists will be invited for the implementation of different kinds of procedures aimed at burnout relief. The processes will be of an educational character to ensure the nurses’ awareness about their emotional state as implied by the self-care nursing theory application. These will include group and individual practices aimed at dealing with stress and burnout. The therapists will retrieve feedback information from the participants to monitor the state of their psychological condition. They will identify the causes of the particular cases and find the ways of overcoming them. The implementation of therapeutic procedures will contribute to the decrease in emotional tension, higher accomplishments rates, the overall positive attitude to work, and consequently to the solving of the nursing understaffing problem.
Potential Barriers to Plan Implementation
The difficulties related to the burnout therapy application might include the following. The voluntary basis of attracting the potential participants might engage a lacking number of nurses that will diminish the reliability of the outcomes. Concerning this barrier, it would be rational to provide some motivational reward for those exposed to intervention implementation. Regarding the limitation of the participants to the employees primarily of the intensive care units, there is a potential bias in results. The interventions applied to the participants occupied in acute care hospitals might be insufficient for the nurses of other medical facilities. It would be relevant to widen the scope of participants involved to diversify the population and to customize the procedures according to the needs of specific areas of nurses’ practice.
The effectiveness of such therapeutic interventions should be tested and empirically studied to analyze their applicability to a broader range of participants. Only the proof of the practical efficiency of the project plan will guarantee the sufficient investing in the nursing sphere for the employees’ retaining (Van den Heede et al., 2013). Establishing therapy facilities for nurses on a regular basis will improve the situation in the nursing stuffing.
In conclusion, nursing understaffing is caused primarily by the emotional exhaustion of medical workers due to the stressful workload in the sector. Although the implementation of therapeutic interventions within the framework of self-care nursing theory in the chosen hospitals is expected to be successful, some difficulties might occur. They include the limited number of voluntary participants, the limitation to intensive care units, and insufficient investment. However, in case of successful results of the project plan implementation, the data could be used for multiple healthcare institutions to solve the problem of nursing understaffing.
References
Alligood, M.R. (2013). Nursing theory: Utilization and application (5th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Khamisa, N., Peltzer, K., & Oldenburg, B. (2013). Burnout in relation to specific contributing factors and health outcomes among nurses: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 10(6), 2214-2240.
Van den Heede, K., Florquin, M., Bruyneel, L., Aiken, L., Diya, L., Lesaffre, E., & Sermeus, W. (2013). Effective strategies for nurse retention in acute hospitals: A mixed method study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 50(2), 185-194.