Nurse burnout negatively affects patient care and the entire healthcare system, including nurses, medical staff, institutions, and communities.
Nurse burnout is associated with declining safety and quality of care for patients and those committed to serving them.
In addition, compounding stress lowers patient satisfaction, increases the risks of medical errors, and destroys employee morale.
Burnout varies widely from 5% to 50%, depending on the healthcare facility and the nurse’s specialization.
As a result, understanding how nurse burnout impacts patient care is essential for developing techniques to decrease fatigue, enhance recovery and improve employee satisfaction.
With that said, let’s look at how burnout affects patients and the healthcare system.
1. Heightened Risk of Medical Errors
Burnout among nurses and healthcare professionals significantly reduces work and health safety.
It also raises opportunities for medical errors and healthcare risks for patients and medical staff.
Burnout diminishes work satisfaction and creates many negative emotional and physical responses.
It includes low motivation, depression, a sense of helplessness, overwhelm, and an inability to decompress and recover.
Over time, healthcare workers make medical mistakes, especially when required to oversee more patients and obligations than is reasonable.
Common Medical Errors
- Human errors
- Flawed communication
- Increased infection risks
- Misdiagnoses/treatment
- Medication errors
- Technical failures
- Improper medical device use
Adequate patient safety involves appropriately identifying and treating patients’ medical conditions, using medication safely, minimizing exposure to infections and viruses, and maintaining a clean/sterile work environment.
It also ensures each patient receives adequate, timely support and attention when providing medical care.
As a result, understanding how to reduce burnout is vital to minimizing medical errors due to fatigue, stress, anxiety, and work pressure.
Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare system and a vital component of patient care.
They ensure that physicians, nurse practitioners, and other specialists address high-risk patients promptly.
They also ensure other medical professionals can provide advanced medical support and treatment by managing less complex medical duties and offering adequate support.
Therefore, keeping employee morale high and nurse burnout to a minimum is critical for optimal patient care and a well-functioning healthcare system.
2. Reduced Quality of Patient Care
A prominent part of burnout among nurses is managing too many patients.
Nurses experiencing burnout spend less time providing essential patient care and feedback and addressing critical medical problems.
Burnout decreases focus, ambition, and healthcare workers’ ability to adequately assess and treat those in need.
In addition, burnout is partly due to managing too many medical assignments.
Multitasking is standard in busy healthcare settings.
However, overworked nurses who manage more responsibilities than is reasonable undoubtedly make errors, decreasing the quality of each patient’s care.
It’s essential that healthcare facilities adequately staff their departments and provide mental health support to minimize employee stress and maintain quality of care.
The continual nursing shortage also profoundly impacts nurses’ mental, emotional, and physical health and decreases work satisfaction.
Therefore, finding ways to support medical staff properly goes a long way toward reducing nursing issues in specific healthcare settings and minimizing employee burnout.
3. Increased Stress on Healthcare Workers
For nurses, burnout reduces performance, work satisfaction, and happiness.
It creates long-lasting adverse effects inside and outside of the hospital.
It also affects coworkers by diminishing effective communication, lowering group morale, and creating chronic frustration.
Patient healthcare and safety are critical to ensuring a healthy and functioning society.
However, it’s also integral that nurses maintain good mental, emotional and physical health because it profoundly affects their happiness and work performance.
Nurses who do not receive adequate support, recovery time, and motivation lose interest in their profession.
As a result, some leave the profession for less stressful careers, non-bedside care jobs, and more fulfilling work.
The consequence of nurses leaving bedside care is a significant reduction in the quality of care for patients in need.
Burnout affects nurses’ lives outside healthcare, negatively affecting relationships with family and friends.
It’s because exhausted and stressed nurses need whatever time is available to rest and recover, even if it negatively impacts their relationships.
Stressed individuals are also more likely to become easily irritated due to frustration from work situations.
Accordingly, work stress and burnout affect every area of a nurse’s life.
Common Indications of Burnout
- Anxiety
- Chronic frustration
- Depression
- Disengagement
- Helplessness
- Inability to cope effectively
- Relationship problems/conflicts
- Poor communication
That said, solid and positive interpersonal relationships are helpful and can significantly reduce burnout.
However, the friendships/relationships must be understanding, patient and supportive.
4. Decreased Hospital/Facility Performance
Every hospital or emergency department employee contributes significantly to the facility’s overall performance.
As a result, facilities with numerous stressed-out employees will likely decrease performance dramatically.
In addition, the department’s morale will lessen because communication, teamwork, and delegation are essential to a well-functioning institution.
Every aspect of the medical chain (including employees) in healthcare must remain robust, positive, and well-connected.
It only takes one negatively affected healthcare worker to decrease the entire department’s performance.
At the least, poor communication dramatically impacts patient care, team organization, and effective delegation of responsibilities and duties.
The result is an increased risk of medical errors, team conflict/frustration, patient dissatisfaction, and reduced safety.
5. Burnout Strains The Healthcare System
As the population ages and senior nurses retire, new specialists must fill the void to ensure the healthcare system runs smoothly.
Every nurse who experiences burnout is more likely to leave the profession or experience decreased work performance.
In turn, the decrease in nurse performance and the staff size reduce the entire healthcare system.
Less qualified nurses mean reduced quality of care and safety for patients and staff.
It also means existing nurses will experience more pressure, work overload, and frustration leading to more burnout.
Healthcare facilities must provide adequate support and medical staff to ensure nurses remain optimistic, nurtured, and perform at their best.
Signs of Burnout
- Absenteeism
- Low employee morale
- Self-doubt
- Feeling helpless and trapped
- Feeling alone/isolated
- Increasingly cynical/negative outlook
Conclusion
Burnout affects numerous aspects of healthcare, including patient safety, patient/nurse happiness, quality of care, organizational commitments by nurses, and productivity.
As a result, healthcare facilities, organizations, and institutions must take nurses’ mental health seriously and do everything possible to minimize burnout.
Nurses who feel adequately rested, recharged, and happy are more likely to perform well in all areas of healthcare.
For instance, they spend better time with patients, reduce medical errors, communicate more effectively and support team members better.
They also stay in their profession longer, reducing turnaround and patient care times.
Accordingly, a healthcare institution’s best interest is to keep staff healthy, positive, and well-supported staff.