No job is easy but some are harder. If you have been to hospital due to some serious emergency, you understand the anxiety, the fear and those countable moments you can never forget. Imagine how it would be for nurses or doctors or any other healthcare worker who is working in that kind of environment?
You might argue part of it because someone dear to you was taken care of there BUT the responsibility that the healthcare workers handle is daunting nonetheless. It’s a passion to save lives that leads them to go for this career but the downsides are a daily friend.
With Pandemic, the situation is worse. The amount of burnout and anxiety that not only the nurses or doctors have but also their family members face is unimaginable.
So lets list down the factors that lead to them:
- Poor staffing system
- Long working hours
- Lack of right support
- Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization
- High-stress environment
- Lack of sleep and proper rest
Let’s get to these points one by one:
- Poor Staffing System
We have talked about this before. The fact that the staffing problem cannot be solved in a day is understandable. Gradually smart solutions like PerDiemz and several other such purposeful apps are paving their way to handle the problem.
With lack of staff needed at the right time, most of the nurses are forced to work overtime which brings us to the next issue — long working hours.
- Long working hours
The job of nurses is anyways not easy and when they are to put in long hours with no sleep, it affects everything right from their body, their mental health and their immunity. It might take time for a new nurse to get used to this and with time, they might but the point of how negatively long working hours affect nurses cannot be ignored.
- Lack of right support
The culture of your workplace matters a lot. When it comes to healthcare, it mostly depends on the main team handing the place. They need to have a vision, protocols with both patient and staff oriented approach.
Many a times, there are issues of lack of teamwork and collaboration, differences in opinions on how to handle patients, dearth of cooperation and peer bullying lead to the staff including that of nurses to leave the job.
- Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization
We often tend to forget that nurses and other healthcare professionals are also human beings who have families, friends and problems just like any of us. While many of our personal lives take a heavy toll on us – so it does for them.
While treating patients, they are expected to be strong-headed, not connect much since the work demands focus and presence of mind. Practical approach is preferred leading to detachment. This has its pros but cons too.
- High-stress environment
This is something you cannot avoid and let’s face it — there is nothing you can do about it. We are talking about patients and their lives here and there will come times when things will be stressful for everyone in the operating room including the nurses. The nurses in Post-acute care and emergency rooms face stress issues.
Other factors like burnout, overwork, lack of team support can only add more to it.
- Lack of sleep and proper rest
We have gone about this before but we feel the need to repeat it to state how important this is. Any human being or living creature for that matter needs proper sleep and rest to function to their best. A certain hours of overtime seems reasonable but when nurses work double shifts, well, it creates problems.
What happens if these issues are not addressed?
If these constant emotions of burnout, it can lead to a lot of issues for both the nurses as well as the facilities employing them.
A few of the most common issues that can come up are:
- Decrease in loyalty
- Depression
- Loyalty
- Less attention span
- Depersonalization
- Lack of personal fulfilment
- No professional accomplishment
- Chances of more errors in judgement
- Irritability
- Poor job performance
Are nurses equipped to handle these?
No, they are not – at least at the start of it! With so many factors listed above, it hardly counts if they are. But there are many strategies that could be adopted for them to get through this.
- Yoga – A daily yoga session could help you handle stress and settle down the anxiousness that you often find difficult to handle.
- Stress Reduction Programs – A lot of support groups are created where nurses can talk out their issues and also realize they are not alone in their battles.
- Compassion Fatigue Programs – These are the programs that are designed to reconnect with themselves, the core values and mission that led them to choose this profession.
- Grief Counselling – Regular counselling sessions from experts every quarter can be arranged where nurses can share how they feel and how their experiences are affecting them so they feel their needs are taken care of.
- Mentorship Programs: There can be formal and informal nursing both. The main goal of these programs is to promote personal and professional growth, job retention and nursing supportive relationships between experienced nurses and fresh nurse graduates.
A balanced work-life, ability to choose where to work, improved attention to these issues and fair pay can still be achieved with platforms like PerDiemz who are gradually making their way into the industry with the sole purpose of giving better opportunities to nurses.
If you are a nurse on the lookout for great nursing opportunities across New York and Connecticut, download PerDiemz from the Play Store or Apple Store. If you are facility looking to address the staffing gaps and get certified nurses – reach us out today on support@PerDiemz.com