Stress and Burnout in Nursing

Nursing Burnout
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Nursing Burnout Interventions: What Is Being Done
The article picked for this discussion is “Nursing Burnout Interventions: What Is Being Done” by Barbara J. Henry. In this article, Henry acknowledges the high prevalence of burnout in emotionally demanding clinical oncology settings. The article explores and outlines the reasons for nursing burnout amongst oncology nurses, how far the consequences go and the interventions that have been employed to curb the problem in typical health care institutions. The article also illuminates the nature and causal of compassion fatigue, as a form of burnout amongst oncology nurses. In this case, Henry (2014) describes burnout as the prolonged response to physical or emotional stressors that lead to the development of feelings of exhaustion, anxiety, self-doubt and ineffectiveness. Statistically, averages of 44% of inpatient oncology nurses are reported to experience burnout to some extent (Henry, 2014). The consequences are detrimental impacts to the physical and emotional well-being of the nurses, low satisfaction rates among patients, organizational costs and mortality in worse cases. The article primarily describes interventions for burnout and offers guidance as pertains the implementation of the interventions to the concerned nurses and organizations.
The article explores other sources and researches to gain insight into the proven interventions and to make a list of possible interventions for the management of compassion fatigue for the use of nurses and organizations.

The stated interventions include the use of both on-site resources and off-site resources, whereby the on-site interventions involve employee assistance programs, the help of a counsellor or a psychologist, psychiatric specialists and support groups. Employee assistance programs (EAPs) are reposted to have a positive effect on how effectively the participants handle issues of emotional health. Off-site interventions were mainly in the form of retreats. The article reports retreats to be highly effective in fostering psychological wellness, by particularly providing social support and addressing burnout in the workplace. Other interventions involved mentorship programs, aimed at assisting those nurses in the primer years of working in oncology, and sessions of compassion fatigue resilience (Henry, 2014).
The article also addresses the significant potential areas for potential burnout and states the possible solutions to the same. The most impacted area lies in the amount of workload per nurse, mainly presented by unexpected events and low nurse staffing ratios. However, such interventions as teamwork, increased delegation of duties and advanced technological training are identified to be effective at reducing the level of workload (Henry, 2014). Other affected areas are those of control, reward and fairness, which need locally-arranged multifaceted approaches, for instance, psychiatric help, the implementation of clinical ladder programs and self-evaluations.
The burnout interventions for oncology nurses presented in this article are linked to a high probability of positive outcomes. This was evaluated from the participants’ comments and satisfaction after having engaged in the various proposed interventions. It is critical to note, however, that the limitation of the interventions lied in their lack of suitable measurement tools and experimental designs reliable enough to evaluate their efficacy. An important point to note is that technological developments, the need for new education make the contributory factors to oncology nursing burnout. Other workable interventions to the management of nursing burnout would be nurse shift management, proper staffing in shifts, the placement of an emergency staffing plan and personal management which would warrant each nurse to see that they do not carry over their to the nurses who take over in the next shift. An emergency staffing plan would outline the right approach to take in the circumstance that an emergency calls for the need of more staff than are available in a particular shift.
Reference
Henry, B. J. (2014). Nursing Burnout Interventions. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 18(2).