Nursing is a challenging profession where nurses take care of patients dealing with mental or physical illness. Nurses are the primary contact points for the patients since they are the ones who check patients' vital signs before giving them appointments to the physician or professional doctor. In this paper, the healthcare stressor would be discussed in detail so that its competing needs are determined, and a policy should be recommended to reduce the stressor. Moreover, the ethical considerations would also be debated for the policy application and its strengths and issues.
The two competing needs that impact nurse's burnout are increased demand for patient care and administrative procedures. The physical health problems in the form of anxiety, depression, insomnia, etc., adversely affect the nurse's health and cause burnout (Salyers et al., 2017). Nurses' functioning is negatively affected as they are forced to take frequent breaks due to tiredness, lethargy, staying absent from work, or exhibit signs of low commitment towards their job. These symptoms directly affect their performance, and patient satisfaction levels are low. These factors collectively become a source for national concern as it has become a national health stressor because nurses are an indispensable part of the healthcare workforce.
The relevant policy that can be developed for reducing healthcare stressor, which is nurse burnout, is adequate staffing. The patient-nurse ratio is a powerful strategy to reduce nurse burnout, as there is a reverse correlational relation between staff hiring and nurse burnout (Chen et al., 2019). Certain burnout constituents such as emotional fatigue, reification, and reduced personal achievement are the causes of nurses' less commitment towards the job. Emotional exhaustion was deducted to be contributing the most out of these components....
References
American Nurse. (2016, April 7). A conversation about the ethics of staffing. Retrieved from https://www.myamericannurse.com/conversation-ethics-staffing/
Chen, Y., Guo, Y., Chin, W., Cheng, N., Ho, J. & Shiao, J. (2019). Patient-nurse ratio is related to nurses' intention to leave their job through mediating factors of burnout and job dissatisfaction. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(23), 4801. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph16234801
Griffiths, P.D., Ball, J.E., Drennan, J., Dall'Ora, C., Jones, J., Maruotti, A., Pope, C., Recio, A. & Simon, M. (2016). Nurse staffing and patient outcomes: Strengths and limitations of the evidence to inform policy and practice. A review and discussion paper based on evidence reviewed for National Institute for Health and Care Excellence safe staffing guideline development. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 63. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2016.03.012
Salyers, M.P., Bonfils, K.A., Luther, L., Firmin, R.L., White, D.A., Adams, E.L. & Rollins, A.L. (2017). The relationship between professional burnout and quality and safety in healthcare: A meta-analysis. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 32(4), 475-482. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-016-3886-9
Scott, P.A., Harvey, C., Felzmann, H., Suhonen, R., Habermann, M., Halvorsen, K., Christiansen, K., Toffoli, L. & Ppastavrou, E. (2018). Resource allocation and rationing in nursing care: A discussion paper. Nursing Ethics, 26(5), 1528-1539. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733018759831
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now