HEALTH AND NURSING

Health and Nursing: Practicum on Caregiver Role Strain and Nurse Burnout

The role strain principally refers to the incompatibility of the social role that an individual has to face when expectations and obligations have to be met. A similar situation could occur in the nursing profession when patients expectations are not fulfilled when nurses feel stressed out emotionally and physically and experience a strain with their single social role towards society and humanity (Ndugbu & Uzoma, 2020). This paper aims to design the final comprehensive action planning and interdisciplinary team collaboration to address the selected clinical issue.

Clinical Issue

It is common to be emotionally and physically burnt out at some point in life when a prolonged involvement in a job, which could be stressful, inflicts additional disengagement gradually. Nursing also experiences such feelings in their profession that directly impact the patients health outcomes, deeming it to be a major public health concern. Energy exhaustion creates a mental distance in terms of low motivation and reduced professional efficiency (Ndugbu & Uzoma, 2020). The issue certainly requires attention so that the risk to public health does not become an economic burden for the state. Patients receiving medical care from such nurses would be at risk of infection or aggravation of symptoms; hence, the clinical issue is of prime concern.

Brief Description of the Proposed Change for the Issue

The proposed change could be addressed by implementing several minuscules but effective interventions discussed in the previous paper. For instance, two levels of interventions were suggested earlier. The first level was about building a strong community network, and the second was about providing support to the nurses with coping skills.

The second level included steps like listening to podcasts or music, having a better sleep in the nurses living room, mindful meditation, and chatting or sharing feelings with fellow nurses that could help reduce nurse burnout. Moreover, some interventions such as the bridge to home and teach-back even for home-care nurses.

An important aspect of reducing nurse burnout is understanding the family dynamics, especially for culturally sensitive populations. It could be interpreted that African American families who have been facing racial discrimination for a long time need special attention, for which nurses should be extra careful. This extra carefulness might inflict an extra burnout, which could be tackled with technological intervention for better comprehension of cultural differences, credentials of the facilitators, and prominence of language preferences.

Anticipated Benefits to the Nursing Profession and Clinical Practice Setting

The anticipated benefits to the nursing profession and within the clinical practice setting are an improvement in quality of life, better interpersonal relationships, and decreased stress leading to better job engagement and better patient outcomes with a reduction of risks for patients symptoms and their satisfaction levels (DallOra et al., 2020). Research suggests that staffing inadequacy and the complexity of the nursing jobs psychological demands lead to higher nurse burnout. This emotional exhaustion could be reduced with the proposed changes through the interventions mentioned in the previous section. Intrinsic work motivation levels are expected to be higher once the personal accomplishments are perceived to be enhanced by the nurses with reduced levels of stress, consequently reduced burnout. Also, work collaborations would be upgraded with better work performance, which implies that improved nurse-physician and nurse-manager relations could diminish stress levels.

Goals and Strategies to Address the Clinical Practice Issue

The goals include better burse work performance by reducing role strain, stress, and burnout to observe improved patient outcomes. Several patients come to the hospital with diverse health needs that create job complications for the nurses. It leads to work sensitivity and an overload of expectations from the nurses in their work environment. There might be an experience of lack of capacity from the nurses side that likely creates professional dissatisfaction.

The strategies for addressing these clinical issues have been mentioned in intervention to prevent burnout from affecting their personality and productivity.

SWOT Analysis, Practice Issue, and Evidence Summary

SWOT analysis of the caregiver role strain and nurse burnout has some strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities for addressing the clinical issue.

The strengths include:

The network resources and community support within the hospital in the form of fellow nurses and leadership/ managers.

Nurses self-efficacy: it is believed that those with stronger coping mechanisms and better self-efficacy are better at handling nurse burnout (Yao et al., 2018).

Population for whom the nurses are working and are willing to learn to grow

The weaknesses include:

Decreased work performance that could lead to more patient errors

Lack of employee resources for combating the clinical issue

Absence of support from the leadership or managers

Nurses reluctance to admit that they are experiencing a poor mental state

Nurses fear that their societal image under burnout would impact their performance, hurting their strengths towards the population they are serving

The threats under caregiver role strain...…with possibly greater staff and fewer pressures to fulfill the assigned tasks could also help.

Methods to Include

After theOLBI has been able to detect the level of burnout, the issue could be tackled with some useful interventions, elucidated with implementation steps and their timelines in the following table.

Steps for Implementation

Timeline

Three good things

Two weeks daily

Continuous collaboration from peers and leadership

Four weeks daily

Interdisciplinary teamwork and collaboration

One week for formulation and conduction daily afterward

Nurse education

For four weeks, daily

Strategy for Teaching

After OLBI assessment, aneedwould be felt for teaching the target population, the nurses who want to address their burnout issue. Theobjectiveof the learning experience would be to educate the nurses on how and when to realize that they are experiencing burnout and what strategies should be adopted immediately to prevent the issue from getting worse or impacting their caregiving quality to the patients. Theinstructional methodthat could be used can be carried out with on-site training inside the hospital (Classroom instruction). Another way could be through online means with video calling or Zoom meetings with nurse teams (Tele-teaching). Theutilization of new modalities, such as information systems and technologies, is inevitable to flourish in times of contemporary medicine. Patients have become more demanding in the fast-paced medical environment and industry. For this purpose, simulations, lime role play, video interactions or skits, and innovative teaching methods could help reduce stress, verified by research (Sharma, 2017; Alqarni, 2018).

Theevidence of interdisciplinary team collaborationwould be sensed through activities when simulations would be carried out. Thematerials developed for teachingwould encompass handouts and PowerPoint slides to explain the concepts and strategies for the said issue. Evaluations would be carried out with the help of similar post-evaluation forms, including gauging scales of above-par performance, at-par performance and need improvement, etc.

Identification of Contribution to Nursing Education

The benefits of nursing educations contribution are numerous since the nurses would get an opportunity to know and discuss various topics and behaviors in which burnout could be prevented. Sharing ideas and listening to new techniques from others related to managing stress would be a helpful way to address the clinical issues directly related to patients outcomes, mortality rates, and nurse turnover. Interactive courses would help the nurses pre-plan their coping strategies and use their learning experience as a strength for success