Introduction
Burnout syndrome is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that develops as a result of chronic stress in the workplace; it is a psychological defense mechanism in the form of a complete or partial exclusion of emotions in response to selected psycho-traumatic effects. One of the first places of specialties subject to a high risk of burnout syndrome is the profession of a nurse (Andrews et al., 2020). The work of nurses involves daily close communication with people suffering from various ailments that require increased care and attention. The current paper strives to analyze the correlations between stress minimization and the self-care strategies of nurses.
PICO Question: For nurses working in hospitals, how does stress, compared to self-care, affect the rate of nurse burnout within a year?
Problem
Psycho-emotional stress in a nurse is associated with a constant violation of the dynamic stereotype and systematic violations of daily biorhythms related to working different shifts. The term burnout describes the effects of high stress and the pursuit of high ideals in helping professions (Seichter, 2018). The leading cause of burnout is the divergence of internal potentials to the conditions of the external environment. Being formed burnout syndrome determines a person’s life causing negative emotions. Medical staff is prone to emotional burnout due to the peculiarities of their professional activities and their great responsibility for patients’ health and vitality (Asmundon et al., 2018). In order to prevent such results, self-care and stress-coping strategies should be applied (Andrews et al., 2020). One is cognitive processing therapy which includes the moral resilience nursing practice.
Intervention
The nurses’ everyday experience can be psychologically and emotionally harmful, resulting in secondary traumatic stress. In order to deal with the high level of emotional stress, cognitive processing therapy can be applied (Asmundon et al., 2018). This type of therapy is part of the structural support from the medical organization administration, including education, information, developing skills, and changing beliefs (Clatty & Hossain, 2020). However, in the scope of these processes, the nurses should be ready to fully acknowledge the stress and be mentally open to build moral resilience to the stressors.
Comparison
The integration of moral resilience is currently considered a fully-integrated self-care strategy. In other words, nurses are primarily offered to cope with stress and respond to ethical issues impartially (Curtis et al., 2019). The widely-spread strategies for building stress resilience claim that nurses should reconsider their approach to care. However, creating the capacity to navigate moral distress in care can be achieved only through complex structural support measures. Therefore, moral resilience is challenging to build nurses independently without an efficient and comprehensive approach, including training and education.
Outcome
The self-care strategy of building moral resilience as a part of cognitive processing therapy for nurses results in decreased stress levels. As a result, such intervention programs lead to a significant decrease in the level of burnout among nurses (Curtis et al., 2019). At the same time, the constant stress and lack of coping strategies at the local or organizational level increase burnout resulting in nurses’ turnover and decreased quality of patient care (Clatty & Hossain, 2020). Therefore, in the work of a nurse, emotional security and self-care strategies are essential.
Conclusion
Based on the literature analysis, it can be stated that stress, compared to self-care strategies, increases the rate of nurse burnout. The moral resilience building as a part of complex and structured cognitive processing therapy highlights that nursing education can be effectively applied to train nurses to cope with stress through self-care. The investigation and usage of PICO underline the essence of the complex problem addressing. The paper emphasizes the structural components of moral resilience building, stating that for nurses, it is challenging to apply self-care strategies without proper training.
References
Andrews, H., Seers, K., & Tierney, S (2020). Needing permission: The experience of self-care and self-compassion in nursing: A constructivist grounded theory study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 101. Web.
Asmundson, G., Baird, S., Powers, M., Roden-Foreman, J., Smits, J., Stein, A., Thrisdottir, A., & Witcraft, S. (2018). A meta-analytic review of cognitive processing therapy for adults with posttraumatic stress disorder. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 48(1). Web.
Clatty, A. & Hossain, F. (2020). Self-care strategies in response to nurses’ moral injury during COVID-19 pandemic. Nursing Ethics, 28(1), 23-32. Web.
Curtis, K., Defilippis, T., & Gallagher, A. (2019). Conceptualizing moral resilience for nursing practice. Nursing Inquiry, 26(3), 100-115. Web.
Seichter, N. (2018). Strengths-based Stress and Burnout Prevention for Nurse Leaders. Nurse Leader, 16(4), 249-252. Web.