Everyone gets burnt out when pushing through our day-to-day routines; but unfortunately, it’s especially common amongst nurses. After all, although rewarding, nursing is not an easy career path. As a nurse, you likely understand the stress that comes alongside the job, and the pressing urge to stay cuddled up in bed all day instead of heading in for your shift might feel all too familiar. 

That said, how can nurses better navigate burnout and avoid losing all motivation?

From sufficient self-care to empowerment from leaders, nurses can avoid symptoms of burnout and find more happiness in the workplace. While exhaustion can lead to discontentment for nurses, it can also have negative impacts on patient care. And let’s face it: our patients are what matter most. 

Work-related stress isn’t a new phenomenon, and burnout has its own special place in any nurse’s career. Because of it, many nurses choose to leave their jobs each year, causing problems with adequate staffing and, as you might know, plenty of other issues. To give you some insight into dealing with the stress that nursing brings, let’s explore why nurse burnout happens and techniques for avoiding it in the future.

What is Burnout?

Burnout is a common psychological problem that many modern-day employees face at some point or another. If you aren’t accustomed to the term, burnout entails the downfall of emotional, psychological, and physical energy levels as a result of work-related stress. And, unfortunately for healthcare professionals, it is far too familiar, especially for nurses.

As nurses, dealing with exhaustion in nearly all areas can affect several essential pieces of the nursing puzzle, including behavior toward coworkers and patients. Not to mention, burnout can lead to feeling of low self-efficacy, making our nursing tasks that much harder. If you think you might be struggling with burnout, here are some common symptoms that many nurses face: a decrease in energy, emotional exhaustion, lack of motivation, work efficacy reduction, and feelings of frustration.

To give you a better idea, there are three main aspects of burnout:

Depersonalization:

When you’re feeling burnt out, it can be tough to want to socialize and engage with other people. You might start cutting back on the number of friends or family members that come into your life outside of work and even begin to be unsympathetic toward others, which is a huge problem–sympathy is arguably the most important part of the job. What’s more, you might feel so detached from patients that caring instructions seem unnecessary.

Low Personal Accomplishment:

When it comes to burnout, it’s easy to get caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle of low personal accomplishment. Once you start feeling bad about yourself and your abilities, it’s much easier to be less likely—or willing—to contribute to your daily tasks.

Emotional Exhaustion:

Emotional exhaustion can make it particularly difficult to function daily. You may feel like you can’t keep your energy levels up, which can lead to depression, hopelessness, and exhaustion.

The Facts About Nurse Burnout

With burnout rates in nurses reaching epidemic levels, it’s no wonder so many are seeking ways to prevent it. Nurses need support from their employers and colleagues now more than ever before. Let’s take a look at some of the stats:

• Around one-third of nurses in the United States are experiencing burnout symptoms.
• Approximately 90 percent of US nurses are female, and around 31.5 percent of nurses report burnout as a contributing reason to their decision to leave their jobs.
• 43.4 percent of nurses have considered leaving their position because of burnout. And out of those, 80 percent were working in a clinical setting.
• Around 37 percent of nursing home nurses experience burnout. Amongst bedside nurses, burnout is 33 percent.

Why Many Nurses Face Burnout

Before switching to home health nursing, I found that it was far too easy to burn myself out as a bedside nurse. Not to mention, when I faced exhaustion, I realized multiple factors often contributed to it. The first step of avoiding burnout is recognizing the variables that play a part.

Working Long Hours
Working long hours is not good for anyone’s mental health. If you find yourself working 40 or more hours a week, you are significantly more likely to suffer from burnout than those working less than 20.

Stressful Work Environments

Far too many nurses are constantly exposed to stressful work environments. Working in intensive care units, dealing with combative patients, and ethical dilemmas can lead you toward burnout. These types of challenging situations can negatively impact your emotional wellbeing over time; most nurses who work in better conditions typically feel more satisfied with their jobs.

Poor Organizational Management & Support

Nursing is more of a team sport than most think. And, unfortunately, hospital culture doesn’t always offer the emotional support that we need to succeed as nurses. If you’re facing problems like coworker bullying, unhelpful communication, competition, and other issues that make your workplace feel like a toxic environment, it’s much easier to burn out. What’s more, if you become frustrated with the way your organization is running things, it can be far too easy to develop a negative attitude and ultimately run out of steam working for an organization you’ve lost respect for.

Intense Workload

Many nurses choose the job for the rewarding aspects of providing quality care and bettering patients’ lives. But, when things get tough because of inadequate staffing and increased workload, it’s common to end up exhausted, both emotionally and physically. At this point, you’re less likely to have the energy—or the time—to offer quality care to all your patients. Not only does an intense workload lead to nurse burnout, but it also puts patients at risk when they aren’t receiving the best care possible.

Peer Bullying

Unfortunately, bullying is a common problem in nursing, and it’s a real one. Whether you’re a new nurse or you’re a seasoned vet, you’ve likely experienced some sort of disrespect from someone else in the field—I know I experienced plenty of mistreatment when I worked alongside other nurses. And when you’re consistently facing abuse, burnout is likely right around the corner.

How can Nurses Break the Burnout Cycle?

Although it can feel like you’re completely over your job and ready to quit, burnout doesn’t have to be a problem. Fortunately, organizations can make a difference in whether nurses face burnout. And there are several things you can do as a nurse to reverse—or avoid—burnout before turning in your two-week notice.

 

How Organizations Can Help

Organizations play a major role in how nurses maintain their mental wellbeing. From emotional treatment to humane and realistic scheduling, hospitals and care centers have the responsibility of taking care of their employees to foster happiness and success.

Improve Nurse-to-Patient Ratio

Nurse-to-patient ratios vary between organizations, but they’re often far too trying on nurses. As you can probably imagine, dealing with several patients throughout your shift can quickly become stressful, especially when they need extensive care. When you’re faced with too many patients to handle on a regular basis, your likelihood of burnout increases. Nurse leaders and managers should take the lead in reducing nurse-to-patient ratios to decrease the amount of stress that nurses face during their shifts, which will reduce burnout and, ultimately, turnover.

Implement Emotional Support Programs

Nurses are often overworked and underappreciated, but we do a crucial job. It can be tough to keep up when you’re always on your feet and putting all your energy into caring for others. Regardless of the factors, nurses deserve the opportunity to attend support programs and learn to better cope with burnout and/or manage emotional wellbeing.

Improve Leadership

Leadership is key to creating a workplace that fosters empowerment and companionship. Nurse leaders can reduce burnout rates by doing things like developing helpful policies, providing flexible hours, giving feedback on performances, intensively training new hires, and creating an overall positive work environment.

If you’re in a leadership position, it’s essential to offer support for your subordinates and allow them opportunities to trust you. Believe it or not, you can help your team avoid burnout, which, in turn, will reduce your own stress and help the organization run smoothly. Here are a few tips to help as a leader:

• Let your nurses know that their work is meaningful and that they have a purpose in their position. Remind them often of their worth.
• Provide more opportunities for participation in decision-making to help nurses feel like their opinions have value.
• Frequently show your nurses that you believe in their abilities.
• Set goals for the organization and allow opportunities for your team to reach them.
• Allow creativity and freedom within the workplace as much as possible.

Tips for Nurses

Reducing burnout isn’t solely the organization’s responsibility, though. As a nurse, you can take the wheel in caring for yourself and make an effort to keep yourself motivated and satisfied with your job.

Take a Break

Your job is go, go go, taking care of patients with little time to rest. But sometimes, you just need a break from all the action. Whether your organization provides PTO, or you need to request the time off, don’t forget to take a vacation now and again to decompress and regroup. Not only does a bit of rejuvenation help you avoid burnout, but your patients and coworkers will also thank you.

Change Your Scenery

If you work in a clinical setting, it’s possible to switch things up and change your tasks regularly to avoid over-working yourself in one role. Before quitting your job altogether, try rotating from a patient-centered position to a non-clinical one, such as administrative work, to help you feel more relaxed and less stressed. Not to mention, regular rotation can help you stay challenged with a different set of responsibilities and keep you on your toes. 

Turn Up the Self-Care 

So, you chose a role dedicated to caring for others. But that doesn’t mean you should up and forget about yourself. Self-care is crucial for dealing with life in general, but it’s an especially useful preventive strategy to cope with burnout and work-related stress. In your free time, try to implement a self-care routine, including exercise, improving your sleep habits, and taking the time to do something you enjoy. 

Bottom Line

As nurses, we face some grueling work environments. From providing exceptional patient care to managing our personal lives, burnout can be all too real. While nurses are the ultimate care providers in any healthcare setting, we also need to be facilitated, respected, and empowered to avoid the psychological barrier that is exhaustion. Nurse burnout not only affects you and your job satisfaction, but it also has a bit impact on whether you can offer the best care possible for the patients you adore. Fortunately, with enough self-care and better leadership, maintaining happiness at work is possible.