The Effects of Nurse Burnout
The effects of nurse burnout are far-reaching. Everyone, from your patients and their families to your nurses and the entire facility, can be affected by nurse burnout.
Here are some of the effects of nurse burnout:
Nurse Well-Being – Nurse burnout can lead to feelings of dread about work, mental and physical exhaustion, sleep issues, and depression for your nurses. The effects of nurse burnout also include compassion fatigue, causing your nurses to disengage from your patients.
Patient & Family Satisfaction – Interactions between your nurses and patients and their family members are crucial to the patient experience and patient satisfaction scores.
A study published in the journal Medical Care found the following relationship between nurse work environment, nurse burnout, and patient satisfaction with nursing care:
“Patients cared for on units that nurses characterized as having adequate staff, good administrative support for nursing care, and good relations between doctors and nurses were more than twice [as] likely as other patients to report high satisfaction with their care, and their nurses reported significantly lower burnout. The overall level of nurse burnout on hospital units also affected patient satisfaction.”
Patient Safety – Clinicians suffering from burnout may be less motivated and/or may experience lower cognitive functioning due to emotional exhaustion, putting patient safety at risk.
An article published in the American Journal of Infection Control found a significant association between nurse burnout and UTIs and surgical site infection. According to the researchers, “hospitals in which burnout was reduced by 30% had a total of 6,239 fewer infections, for an annual cost saving of up to $68 million.”
Reducing nurse burnout can decrease the likelihood of medical errors and improve patient safety at your facility.
Turnover & Nursing Shortage – According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, factors contributing to the national nursing shortage include insufficient nursing school enrollment and faculty, high retirement numbers, the aging population’s need for more healthcare workers, and high turnover/number of nurses leaving the profession altogether.
Unfortunately, there is a cyclical relationship at work here: the national nursing shortage increases nurse burnout for those who are working in the profession as their workloads consequently grow.
As you can see, the effects of nurse burnout have a critical impact on nurse well-being, patient satisfaction, patient safety, and the national nursing shortage. Please read our next post on how to prevent and address nurse burnout to ensure your health system can avoid the dire effects of nurse burnout mentioned above.
