Introduction
Today, burnout and occupational stress are often associated with the nursing practice because of the number of tasks that nurses should perform daily (Khamisa, Oldenburg, Peltzer, & Ilic, 2015). Working in stressful environments, nurses experience significant physical and emotional pressure. Such stress leads to nurses’ burnout, and then, to decreasing the quality of care.
Problem Statement
The specific problem to focus on in this project is that many nurses do not know how to cope with occupational stress, and their burnout leads to changes in their performance, productivity, and quality of care, resulting in negative effects on patients’ outcomes. Therefore, it is important to guarantee that nurses use specific stress management techniques to reduce burnout and improve patients’ experiences.
Project Goals
The development of this project is aimed at improving nurses’ practice in terms of using effective stress management techniques to reduce burnout and improve the quality of the provided care with the focus on patients’ outcomes. Thus, the goal of this project is to provide nurses with a better understanding of strategies that can be used to manage stress and prevent burnout.
The rationale for Selecting the Problem
The rationale for selecting the problem is the following one: nurses’ burnout and their inability to cope with stress often lead to increases in the number of injuries and medical errors, as well as decreases in the quality of care. Thus, about 80% of injuries in the workplace, and about 40% of nurse turnover are associated with nurses’ burnout (Sarafis et al., 2016). From this perspective, to reduce cases of nurse burnout and improve patient related care and outcomes, it is important to examine and discuss stress management techniques which are effective to address this problem.
References
Khamisa, N., Oldenburg, B., Peltzer, K., & Ilic, D. (2015). Work related stress, burnout, job satisfaction and general health of nurses. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 12(1), 652-666.
Sarafis, P., Rousaki, E., Tsounis, A., Malliarou, M., Lahana, L., Bamidis, P.,… Papastavrou, E. (2016). The impact of occupational stress on nurses’ caring behaviors and their health related quality of life. BMC Nursing, 15(1), 56-66.