It is no secret that nurses deal with a lot of difficult scenarios. Nurses spend their shifts helping others through some of the most challenging times of their lives, all while documenting, charting, and balancing the timing of medications and procedures. While most nurses and other healthcare providers are happy to help, they often find themselves facing feelings of overwhelm and eventual nursing burnout.
Related: Boundaries and Burnout: Strategies for Nurses to Maintain Self
Burnout in healthcare
Experts classify nurse burnout using three symptoms:
- Exhaustion
- Depersonalization (cynicism)
- Reduced personal accomplishment
Nurses who are burned out may complain that they are pushed too hard during their shift. They may claim they’re not able to make a positive impact on their patients. They may feel they’re not doing their best at work.
Healthcare providers who are burned out are more likely to do the bare minimum at work, call in sick more frequently, and leave the profession completely. A study conducted in 2021 showed that over half of working nurses were experiencing moderate levels of burnout, with 28% experiencing high levels of burnout.
Burnout negatively affects the entire healthcare system in several ways. Research shows a positive correlation between nurse burnout and turnover and staff depression scores. In addition, organizations with high levels of caregiver burnout tend to have worse outcomes, poorer quality of care, and lower patient satisfaction scores.
Risk factors for nursing burnout
With so many nurses experiencing burnout, and burnout causing so many problems, it is important for both healthcare organizations and individual providers to look closely at the risk factors for burnout among nurses.
Some of the most common risk factors for caregiver burnout include:
- Short staffing
- Frequent patient deaths
- Traumatic patient deaths
- Working overtime
- Inconsistent day/night schedules
- Stressful work environment
- Long shifts
- Moral distress
Some of these factors are unmodifiable. Nurses working in acute care such as emergency departments and intensive care units cannot escape patient deaths without transferring to a new unit, and hospitals by nature tend to be stressful places to work. However, leaders and nurses can make improvements to avoid burnout and improve morale among caregivers.
Tips to avoid nursing burnout
Nursing burnout is common, but not unavoidable. Many healthcare providers have found effective strategies to avoid getting burned out and protect their mental health.
Take time off
Taking time off is one of the best remedies for a nurse experiencing burnout. Many nurses struggle with the idea of taking time off, because they are leaving their unit to work with one less staff member, and they worry about how their teammates and patients will do without them.
The reality is that a burnt-out nurse is more likely to make mistakes, miss small changes in patient condition, and can have a negative attitude that brings the entire unit down. While nurses may struggle with guilt about taking time off, the benefits of having a happy, well-rested, and motivated teammate are worth the sacrifice.
Debrief after stressful shifts
Dealing with patient deaths, difficult family members, grave diagnoses, and severe morbidity can be hard on even the most stoic of caregivers. Unit managers and charge nurses can help their teams by ensuring that there is always time for staff to debrief and discuss their feelings after a particularly tough shift.
Many units choose to mandate a debriefing period after every patient’s death or cardiac arrest, and some even bring in counselors to help their nurses work through their feelings.
Related: Compassion Fatigue Primer for Our Current Work Environment
Discuss problems with leadership
Nurse leaders are not always aware of the challenges their staff are facing each day. Nurses and administrators must find ways to work together to find solutions to problems. Nurses should bring complaints or suggestions to their leadership team whenever they can. Leaders should listen without getting defensive.
Nurses who feel supported by their managers and hospital administrators are more likely to take pride in their work, take initiative to improve the organization, and feel higher job satisfaction.
Try working in a different unit
Every nurse has a different tolerance for patient morbidity and mortality. Acute care nurses often see more death and severe disability than subacute care, outpatient, or clinic nurses. Similarly, some nurses struggle to cope when taking care of pediatric patients, and still others might have a hard time working on an oncology unit.
If a nurse begins to feel burnt out due to high patient acuities, a challenging patient population, or frequent poor outcomes, changing specialties can help.
Maintain a consistent schedule
Lack of sleep and frequently changing schedules contribute to feelings of exhaustion and eventual burnout. Nurses who work evenings, nights, or worse, a mixture of days and nights, are at high risk of sleep deprivation.
Keeping a consistent sleep/wake schedule not only helps caregivers avoid burnout, it also lowers the risk of heart disease, cancer, depression, and other serious health problems.
Set firm boundaries
Nurses tend to be self-sacrificing, putting their patients’ and teammates’ needs before their own. While serving others and doing good deeds is good for mental health, it is important not to overdo it.
Nurses must set firm boundaries with their managers, teammates, patients, and patients’ families. Being able to say no to working extra shifts, speak up when they feel disrespected, set limits on patient behavior, and enforce reasonable rules with patient family members will not stretch themselves too thin while at work.
Avoid working overtime
Overtime pay, incentives, and bonuses make it hard to turn down overtime shifts. Unfortunately, most nurses who are working frequent overtime hours are doing so because their unit is chronically short-staffed. Because of this, working overtime can be a double whammy of long hours plus a stressful work environment.
While working overtime is a great way to save up for a vacation or pay off a car, nurses need to know themselves and gauge whether overtime hours will negatively impact their mental health.
