Picture this: You are a nurse on a busy hospital unit. Your unit is short-staffed, so instead of the five patients you are supposed to have (which is already too many), you have been assigned eight. To make matters worse, your certified nursing assistant called out, so you are also responsible for all of your patients’ daily activities, including feeding, toileting, and repositioning. Already, you can feel yourself drowning in the medications, treatments, and hygiene/comfort measures you will be responsible for today. 

During the course of your 12-hour shift, your eight patients call you constantly to address their needs. One is in pain. Another needs to go to the bathroom. Another is confused and trying to get out of bed. Another pulled out their IV and is bleeding. Another has a family member who wants to talk to you. Another is nauseous. Another needs to be fed. Another needs to be discharged.

It is impossible to address everyone’s needs in a timely manner. You are only one person, and although you try to prioritize the best you can, some patients will feel neglected. You can’t call on a coworker for help because they are also busy with their eight patients. You feel overwhelmed and you realize you have been set up for failure. When administration receives poor patient satisfaction surveys, they will blame it on you. They will insist there is more you can do to “make the patients happy.”

When the day is done, you have been yelled at, cursed at, and berated because you could not be in all of these rooms immediately when you were needed. You leave work feeling defeated and completely unfulfilled in your career choice. You wonder, in all the chaos, if you kept your patients safe. Did you make a medication error? Did you miss a sign that your patient’s condition was worsening? 

What is burnout?

Burnout has been a common issue within the nursing profession for many years. However, since the Covid-19 pandemic, nurses are experiencing burnout at an unprecedented rate. In fact, a new report shows that nearly half of all healthcare workers plan to leave their current positions by 2025. This decision to leave the profession is largely due to burnout.

Burnout is a condition directly related to a person’s workplace conditions and the stress that accompanies them. These factors can include an overbearing workload, ineffective teamwork, and poor organizational processes. Nurses experiencing burnout typical feel emotionally exhausted and detached from their work. They often feel unappreciated, overwhelmed, and demoralized. 

But why do nurses feel this way? Why are they experiencing burnout unlike ever before? 

In order to understand this, you have to consider all of the challenges that nurses face on a daily basis. As displayed in the example above, nursing is both physically and emotionally demanding. Nurses often deal with inadequate staffing, long work hours, poor unit morale, workplace bullying, and abusive behavior from patients. The level of depersonalization that burned out nurses experience can have serious consequences on care quality and patient safety. 

The persistent challenges of patient safety in healthcare

Patient safety remains a steep challenge within the healthcare system. In fact, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, resulting in more than 250,000 deaths per year. When burnout is added to the mix, studies show that the risk to patient safety increases even more. In fact, there is a direct correlation between a nurse’s mental wellbeing and work performance. This means that nurses who are experiencing burnout are far more likely to experience a negative patient safety event than those who are not. 

I believe that the blame cannot be placed solely on the nurse’s shoulders because the system is failing them. Nurses are so bogged down with poor organizational processes and an unrealistic workload that they can no longer do their job well. An overworked, overwhelmed nurse is not a truly safe nurse.

How do we fix this?

If healthcare entities truly care about improving patient safety, the burden of burnout among nurses cannot be ignored. Employers are experiencing increased pressure to provide a mentally safe workplace, but that pressure does not seem to be influencing the healthcare sector like it is other professions.

The truth is, as long as nurses continue to feel overwhelmed by unrealistic workloads, issues with patient safety will continue. A complete overhaul of our healthcare system and organizational processes is needed in order to ensure that nurse workloads are reasonable and safe. Only then will we see a true difference in patient safety outcomes.

References

1. Influence of Burnout on Patient Safety: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
2. Clinician of the Future Report 2022
3. Burnout Among Health Professionals and Its Effect on Patient Safety
4. Influence of Workload on Primary Care Nurses’ Health and Burnout, Patients’ Safety, and Quality of Care: Integrative Review
5. The web of silence: a qualitative case study of early intervention and support for healthcare workers with mental ill-health

Bio

Ayla Roberts is a freelance nurse writer and health content creator with over 8 years of clinical experience, primarily in pediatrics. She has also worked extensively in nursing education and healthcare simulation. She holds both a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Nursing, but her first love has always been writing. Connect with her on LinkedIn or visit www.thernhealthwriter.com.

Thank you for reading Patient Education Essentials, the Write Shift RN blog.

Disclaimer: This article was written as a guest post for Write Shift RN LLC's blog. The information in it may not be wholly fact-checked or edited, allowing the reader to see the writer's work and skills firsthand. This information is not intended as medical advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only. Always talk to your doctor or other qualified healthcare providers about any questions or concerns you may have regarding medical conditions.