Introduction
The clinical experience showed different perspectives on the issue of nurse burnout, along with the root causes of this. As Maslach has noted, six areas of work life should be balanced to satisfy the employee. In this sense, healthcare workers associated with care practices may need the given balance. Due to these issues, burnout happens among nurses with a higher degree, affecting the labor force. During my clinical practice, I noticed a little attempt to emphasize the balance of reward and workload.
Nurse Staffing Challenges and Workload
One of the critical notices was that my clinic was understaffed with nurses. Thus, a few workers were obligated to have a higher workload. With more work, nurses took more patients to work with. They also had to limit the time for other essential functions in nurses’ work and work longer daily.
It is also closely associated with the additional balance of reward. While having a more demanding workload, nurses still got similar wages and other forms of rewards. This will lead to losing motivation to work since the additional workload does not guarantee any related rewards.
In addition, the additional workload leads to burnout. Although this was not the case in my healthcare center, the workload can also be associated with a lack of equipment and other resources. Jarzynkowski (2022) notes that nurses face burnout among the biggest groups.
Although work balance can be the case for other departments as well, nurses are among those who experience it at a constant rate. A higher workload would consistently result in lower job satisfaction and poorer care quality. Due to burnout in the workplace, nurses can contribute less to their profession’s care approach.
Conclusion
Overall, the workload should be balanced between the hours nurses work and the hours they have to rest and release stress. With a better balance of these characteristics, providing better quality treatment and decreasing the nurse turnover rate is possible.
References
Jarzynkowski, P., Piotrkowska, R., Mędrzycka-Dąbrowska, W., & Książek, J. (2022). Areas of work life as predictors of occupational burnout of nurses and doctors in operating theaters in Poland—Multicenter Studies. In Healthcare, 10(1), 1-11. Web.