Reducing nurse burnout is crucial for maintaining a healthy work environment and ensuring patient safety. Nurse burnout, driven by chronic workplace stress, can result in emotional exhaustion, lower job satisfaction, and increased errors. To effectively tackle this issue, organizations should focus on strategies such as minimizing administrative tasks, improving communication, streamlining workflows, and prioritizing well-being.
According to the American Nurses Association, nurse burnout is associated with “unmanaged, chronic workplace stress.” It is the physical and psychological exhaustion resulting from the demands of the workplace. This often leads to exhaustion, emotional distance from the job, cynicism, and decreased workplace efficacy. In the acute care hospital setting, this apathy can have dangerous consequences for patient safety.
A recent survey from AMN Healthcare found that 30% of RNs are likely to leave their career due to burnout, a major factor contributing to understaffing and increasing the need for strategies focused on reducing employee turnover.
The result is increased stress and, thus, increased burnout. The cycle perpetuates itself.
Furthermore, exhausted, cynical nurses are more likely to make mistakes in the workplace. Not only can this harm patients, but studies suggest it can negatively impact a nurse’s psychological well-being.
Boosting resilience is one key to reducing nurse burnout and improving patient outcomes. Below, we’ll explore other actionable strategies to prevent nursing burnout. Continue reading to learn how you can reduce burnout in nursing at the organizational and personal levels.
Diminished staff leads to higher caseloads. The higher the patient-to-nurse ratio, the higher the patient mortality rate. When nurses are already spread thin enough to cause clinical concern, additional administrative duties can add an unnecessary burden.
With that said, clear and accurate safety data is often crucial for enacting positive change. Therefore, operations teams must help strike a balance. The easier it is to report safety events, the more likely it is to prevent them in the future.
Likewise, administrative teams must promote a non-punitive culture in which near-misses are celebrated or even rewarded. Consider a Good Catch program, which facilitates learning and helps identify where additional preventative measures are needed.
Furthermore, more time-consuming tasks, such as healthcare data abstraction, should be outsourced. Consider utilizing data abstraction outsourcing to organizations with the expertise to generate meaningful and actionable data.
Outsourcing removes the burden from frontline staff, a critical approach for reducing employee turnover and allowing them to focus on high-quality care. Likewise, it frees up operations teams to enact data-driven change. These quality improvements are key to further nurse burnout prevention.
Nurses themselves are in the best position to communicate their challenges, which is key to reducing nurse burnout and improving job satisfaction. They may have the best suggestions for interventions to reduce nurse burnout. Ensure there are clear channels for two-way communication between nurses and administrators. This begins with regular 1:1 and team meetings.
Nurses need to feel heard, and administrators must actively address their concerns. Feeling heard fosters a sense of trust and psychological safety. As a result, nurses are more likely to report issues and feel like they can make a difference.
A more systematic way to accomplish this is to implement a survey on patient safety culture. This survey should assess nurses’ perceptions of communication, teamwork, and risk reporting.
However, simply conducting the survey isn’t enough. To defeat burnout, nurses need a sense of hope. They must believe that their opinions matter.
Thus, you must use the results to enact change. A sense of autonomy and control is crucial for long-term burnout prevention in hospitals.
If nurses are struggling with burnout, it’s often worthwhile to look at your organization’s technology. First, ensure the systems you have in place are effective and up to date. Collaborate with nurses and IT specialists to design automated workflows for repetitive tasks. As discussed, a SOPS survey can help you better understand which repetitive tasks consume a significant portion of time.
Automating repetitive tasks frees up nurses’ time for more critical patient care activities, reducing stress. The result is improved efficiency, reduced errors, and, ultimately, better patient care.
Support programs promoting work-life balance, physical health, and mental well-being are essential.
Consider implementing the following:
Research suggests that even pre-pandemic, nurses had a higher incidence of mental health struggles than the general population. If possible, consider offering access to psychological counseling services. Psychotherapy, stress management, and coaching are all effective options for reducing burnout.
That said, these should not be after-the-fact additions. Programs should not lengthen the workday or require nurses to use their free time or break time to engage. Any nurse going above and beyond should be compensated for their efforts.
Programs are only effective if the administration encourages their use and there are no negative repercussions for participating. This may require a cultural shift at the organizational level.
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