Nurse Burnout - Essay Sample

Introduction

The topic assigned to our group is nurse burnout during a pandemic. Burnout can be termed as a physiological disorder described by Wu and his colleagues and his colleagues as a state of emotional, psychological, and physical stress in response to prolonged exposure to occupational or professional related stress (Wu et al., 2020). Since December 2019, when the first case of human infection with the novel coronavirus occurred, the emergency of this deadly and infectious disease has spread out rapidly out internationally affecting people in 215 countries and territories with the current tally exceeding 76 million infections and claiming more than a million individuals. The total number of individuals who have succumbed to the pandemic has caused panic and a state of anxiousness across the globe. Although varying in different countries, healthcare workers constitute a notably high number of individuals who contracted the COVID-19 (Ahmed et al., 2020).

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To combat the ailment, nurses and other healthcare professionals have been called upon to work day and night. It is however important to note that a substantial number of the nurses have contracted the illness and others succumbed to it. This has had a significant rise in the nurse’s burnout cases which can affect the care received by the patients (Houser, 2020).

Literature Synthesis

The article was authored by Wu et al., (2020). The article addresses the coronavirus epidemic and how it spread from China. In the affected nations the physicians as well as the primary physician are under high preassure to deliver and therefore, they are under a lot of pressure. The purpose of the research or study was to establish the comparison between the occurrence of burnout between the doctors and the clinicians on the frontier in the fight against covid-19 and these that work in the usual wards.

Methods and Participants

A “survey with a sum of 49 questions that were administered to 220” healthcare professionals from the coronavirus ER nurse and the other usual wards with equal representation of the participants from the frontline and normal wards. Such information as the age of the participants the marital status as well as the “Maslach burnout inventory, medical personnel were collected.”

Instruments

The result from the study revealed that although the clinicians working on the frontier in the emergency wards, their level of anxiety and stress compared to that of the other nurses working in the usual wards had the same frequency of burnout during the pandemic. The information from the study is therefore important as it illustrates that the nursing population experiences burnout owing to the nature of their work. And this is important as it gives the organizations and the employees pointers as to the prevalence of burnout and this instigates the desire for assessing strategies to address the issues and help cope improve resilience towards the issue.

The Implication

Compared to the healthcare professionals working in the usual working in uninfected patients, the nurses working on the frontier throughout the COVID-19 pandemic had a much higher rate of frequency. This, therefore, offers the basis for the governmental and Organisational bases in the formation of policies aimed at improving resilience and enhancing burses coping mechanisms (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,2020). This, therefore, means in compacting the burnout in the nursing field all the healthcare professionals including the ones working the frontline during a pandemic and others that attend to the patients in the uninfected sections ought to be taken into consideration.

Conclusion

Exposure to traumatic situations or events can have a significant impact on employees across different fields and industries. The COVID-19 has had a similar impact on the nursing fraternity. From the resources identified in the literature synthesis, it can be concluded that all nurses either on the frontier or the usual wards are faced with a significant level of burnout and this is owing to the complexity of their work. Additionally, it is important to note that the safety of the healthcare worker is important not only important to them but the patients as well. therefore, the hospital and the governmental organization should put measures in place aimed at helping the nurses and physicians deal with the complexity of their work and hence reducing nurse burnout while enhancing coping and resilience mechanisms.

References

Ahmed, I., Asghar, M. S., Iqbal, S., Salman, S., Hassan, M., Rasheed, U., … Abbas, M. B. (2020). Levels of Anxiety and Depression amongst the Frontline Healthcare Workers of COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Survey with Follow-Up. Journal of Psychiatry and Psychiatric Disorders, 04(04).
https://doi.org/10.26502/jppd.2572-519x0110

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2020, May 5). Healthcare Personnel and First Responders: How to Cope with Stress and Build Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/mental-health-healthcare.html.

Houser, J. (2018). Nursing research: reading, using, and creating evidence (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Ross, J. (2020). The Exacerbation of Burnout During COVID-19: A Major Concern for Nurse Safety. Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing, 35(4), 439–440.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jopan.2020.04.001

Wu, Y., Wang, J., Luo, C., Hu, S., Lin, X., Anderson, A. E., … Qian, Y. (2020, April 10). A Comparison of Burnout Frequency Among Oncology Physicians and Nurses Working on the Frontline and Usual Wards During the COVID-19 Epidemic in Wuhan, China.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885392420302050.