Introduction
In the previous years, many epidemiological studies show a high occurrence of specialized stress
syndromes of burnout in many nations. The assessment of exhaustion in occupational settings
indicates that the burnout condition ensues among specialists whose job mainly involves intense
interactions and constant demands during interactions with people who have emotional and physical
needs. Unsatisfactory work leads to lasting outlooks of depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and
cynicism among professionals in their daily encounters. Generally, the burnout syndrome is common
among teachers and health workers because the occupations have work stress and burnout that are
caused by various factors outside the work environment. The existing data suggest that the burnout
issues that have a widespread adverse effect on nurses, and thus, the comprehension of burnout
dimension facilitates the creation of interventions to address the issue.
Burnout is a health condition that results from permanent job-related stress and health care professionals such as nurses are at high risk of developing burnout condition. Burnout condition contributes to psychological and physical illnesses that lead to absenteeism, cause compassion fatigue, reduce efficiency, and staff turnover. This can cause nurses to leave the profession. Nurses who attend to patients in specialty areas such as intensive care units are more susceptible to burnout and stress (Vasconcelos, Martino, & França, 2018). Various characteristics of critical care work environment that contribute to increased risk of burnout condition include malfunctioning of technological equipment used in patient’s monitoring in intensive care units, coping with trauma by family members, and high acuity of patients in need of complex care workloads the critical care nurses.
Burnout condition encompasses three primary characteristics that include depersonalization, low sense of personal attainment, and emotional exhaustion. However, emotional fatigue is considered an essential element of burnout syndrome. Firstly, depersonalization is a psychological withdrawal from interactions and developments of cynical, negative, and callous attitude. The essentialism philosophy affects depersonalization and contains emotional exhaustion effects. However, the concept associates more with the environment and interactions with people and objects. There exists a correlation between significant fulfillments, work pressures, and burnout. Ideally, when an individual fails to make a clear distinction between environment and self in comparison to how life is, this reflects the depersonalization concept. The individual’s failure to work within self-transcendence causes an experience that the profession is a burden and the individual suffers exhaustion and lack of job satisfaction. Therefore, the situation makes existentialism an important philosophy and a mind frame about depersonalization that causes an individual to transience themselves thus entering into a relationship with objects and individuals.
Additionally, physical burnout provides an environment for boosting health professionals’ sense of personal attainment. The situation increases professional rewards that help health care professionals to feel less emotionally exhausted and energized in their daily work. A primary driver of nurse satisfaction in the healthcare settings emerges from a sense of provision of quality patients’ care. The transfer of administrative tasks away from physicians’ help to nurses to attain a sense of satisfaction. Relief from administrative duties allows nurses to pereform the work they were trained on and also helps to improve workflows in health care settings. Generally, assisting nurses in determining aspects that stirs their professional satisfaction provides them with time to pursue their passion that ultimately contributes to combat burnout syndromes. Therefore, recognition of hard work helps nurses to have a sense of personal attainment.
Burnout among the ICU nurses results from demanding and stressing work environment. Ideally, patients in intensive care units lack decision making capacity. Hence, health care professionals such as nurses depend on family members to gather information, and this complicates communication process. Additionally, the ICU work environment is increasingly becoming technical thus requiring extensive skills in advanced life sustenance medical therapies. Various aspects of ICU lead to moral distress and subsequently cause emotional pain among nurses (Cocker & Joss, 2016). Thus, compassion fatigue causes burnout syndromes, which reveals the results of traumatic stress in the professional life of nurses during the provision of health care services.
Health care practitioners, particularly, nurses who work in adult intensive care units usually experience clinical issues that make their profession challenging. In their provision of health care services to patients, nurses face a challenge that requires making an informed decision before taking a course of action. The challenging nursing work environment intensifies dissatisfaction factors in intensive care units and creates imbalances between nurse’s sources of suffering and pleasure. Due to their diminishing capacity to regulate distress encountered in clinical settings, many ICU nurses tend to implement defensive strategies that cause them to leave the profession (Viejo, 2018). Thus, it is essential to apply interventions that deal with problems in intensive care units to ensure effectiveness in the provision of healthcare services to patients.
Conclusion
Burnout at the workplace leads to various effects on patient outcomes. Unsatisfactory work leads to
lasting outlooks of depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and cynicism among professionals in
their daily encounters. Health care facilities should adopt various strategies aimed at reducing the
work load for nurses. Various strategies could be implemented such as hiring more nurses and
adopting modern technology in the work practices, among others. Notably, recognition of hard work
helps nurses to have a sense of personal attainment.
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References Cocker, F., & Joss, N. (2016). Compassion fatigue among healthcare, emergency and community service workers: a systematic review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 13(6), 618. Vasconcelos, E. M. D., Martino, M. M. F. D., & França, S. P. D. S. (2018). Burnout and depressive symptoms in intensive care nurses: relationship analysis. Revista Brasileira de enfermagem, 71(1), 135-141. Viejo, A. (2018). ICU nurses suggest changes to resilience programs. AACCN. Retrieved from https://www.aacn.org/newsroom/icu-nurses-suggest-changes-to-resilience-programs