Nursing is a valuable profession that offers patients with the desired and highest quality of care. In most cases, nurses work long, irregular hours. In such aspects, they tend to experience different work-related stress factors related to the symptoms of burnout. Researchers have had the chance to depict the association between burnout and work environment for the nurses. From a definitional perspective, burnout refers to the prolonged psychological response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors in the workplace. Burnout contributes to issues such as emotional exhaustion, reduction in personal accomplishment, and depersonalization. Burnout is a problem for hospital managers because it affects organizational effectiveness and patient safety. Patient outcomes are the most significant indicators of quality. It calls for assessing ways of handling nurse burnout as a tool to help improve patient safety. This paper illustrates the o bjectives and strategies on how they will improve the focus of the capstone project. It presents the key outcomes intended once the project is implemented. It outlines the strategies on meeting the key outcomes.
Objectives
To comprehend the relationship between patient outcomes and nurse burnout
One of the objectives of the capstone project is to enable the determination of the relationship between nurse burnout and patient outcomes. In the previous research practices, researchers have explored different effects of nurse burnout on the patient outcomes. Based on this, the objective will play a critical role in directing the capstone project by illustrating the urgency of the problem is affecting the quality of care. Addressing this objective will be essential in ensuring that the capstone project captures the contributions of the nurse burnout to adverse events such as medication error, nosocomial, and patient falls in different instances. Nurse burnout also contributes to increased infections among the patients in the hospitals. From this perspective, the objective will help comprehend the relationship between nurse burnout and patient outcomes as a primary focus on addressing burnout.
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To incorporate evidence-based nursing models to eradicate nursing burnout
Notably, burnout is one of the critical issues contributing to the reduction of performance quality among nurses. It is appropriate to consider adopting and implementing the right use of evidence-based practices to reduce burnout among the nurses to promote the quality of the services offered to patients. Hall et al. (2016) ascertained a positive correlation between health professionals’ poor wellbeing, including burnouts, and compromised patient safety . The objective will play a critical role in guiding the capstone project by aiding the right alternatives to address the issue at the healthcare facilities. Besides, the objective will concentrate on steering the project toward understanding the problem and its implications on the performance quality; thus, the need to eradicate it in pursuit of improved patient outcomes such as safety.
To explore the manifestation of the problem in the United States
In the United States, over 50 percent of the clinicians tend to experience burnout symptoms. From this perspective, depression, a constellation of exhaustion, and suicide are cases of the public health epidemic having adverse implications on the quality and safety of healthcare. It is essential to note that burnout manifests itself through emotional exhaustion or inability by the nurses to find work meaningful through feelings of ineffectiveness. These aspects are critical in enabling the capstone to understand what we are dealing with as a profession. The objective is valuable in ensuring that we explore the extent of the problem in the United States. Understanding the problem is essential in coming up with solutions to achieve the set goals and targets.
To explore the causes of the nursing burnout
There are diverse causes of burnout among the nurses in the United States including personal and system factors. Some of the individual factors include failure to engage in good self-care and healthy lifestyle behaviors such as regular physical activity or healthy eating practices. Other nurses do not get adequate sleep while some fail to practice daily stress reduction strategies such as exercise or maintaining healthy lifestyles to address the emotional demands of their work as noted by ( Ross, 2016) . Besides personal factors, there system factors such as inadequate staffing patterns, long shifts, and continuous challenges associated with electronic health records leading to less time with the patients and increased pressure on the caseloads. Understanding these causes will be ideal in creating a conducive environment for the development of the evidence-based solutions to achieve of the desired patient safety.
To illustrate the importance of eradicating burnout in patient safety and outcomes
Additionally, this is an essential objective. Nurse disengagement and fatigue tend to pose severe challenges for healthcare organizations. Nurses believe that their jobs contribute to burnout. Besides, about 80 percent of the nurses believe that healthcare facilities and hospitals are losing excellent staff because of the tendency of other employers to provide better work/life balance. Garcia et al. (2019) note that when health professionals experience burnout, it worsens patient safety. High workload, long working hours, and interpersonal relationship are attributed to the high levels of burnout among health professionals . When nurses experience or encounter burnout, which is the state of the physical and emotional exhaustion because of the ongoing stress, it contributes to the increased turnover while also influencing the quality of care, medical outcomes, and patient satisfaction. From this perspective, this objective will be ideal in ensuring a practical understanding of the benefits concerning improved quality care, enhanced medical outcomes, and excellent patient satisfaction.
Strategies Applicable To Achieve the Objectives
In the capstone project, various strategies will be ideal for aiding the achievement of the objectives. The following section explores the different approaches.
Assessment of Policies and Discussions
Critically, one of the strategies in achieving the above objectives is the exploration of the policies and discussions. One of the proven ways of combating emotional exhaustion among the nurses is to offer them the opportunity to participate in decision making, especially when it relates to their specialty. Based on this, the project would consider assessing the policies on their involvement of the nurses. The approach will determine the right approach to the participation of the policies and practices. This strategy will offer room for assessing the role of the procedures in aiding eradication of the nurses’ burnout. Besides, the approach would provide room for the optimization of the benefits of the intervention.
Exploration of the Evidence-based Practices
In the second strategy, the project will involve the utilization of the available evidence-based practices to help in the eradication of nursing burnout as a critical issue affecting the performance quality and safety of the patients in the healthcare context. The strategy will consider the exploration of procedures such as training of the nursing leaders to engage in the recognition and handling of the burnout challenges. The approach ensures that nursing leaders contribute to the project through essential roles in identifying, processing, and preventing burnout among the nurses. The strategy will be valuable in aiding the achievement of the objectives on how to address the issue.
Extensive Literature Review
In this strategy, the focus will be on exploring the issues associated with the nursing burnout and effects. Various studies have focused on the assessment of the issues concerning exhaustion. From this perspective, the approach or strategy will be ideal in identifying the causes of the burnout issue among the nurses ( Hall, Johnson, Watt, Tsipa, & O’Connor, 2016) . The strategy will also aid in achieving the objective associated with the importance of the exploration of the benefits of the eradication of burnout in the nursing sphere. Additionally, the strategy will examine the relationship between the quality of care and nurse burnout.
Assessment of Nurse Scheduling and Involvement
Many nurses tend to work about 12-hour shifts. Being on several days in a row, there are the inevitable contributions to the high levels of stress and fatigue. Nurses tend to believe that more control over the scheduling would be ideal in reducing stress levels or fatigue. Besides, other nurses believe in the importance of improved work/life balance through involvement in shift schedules. Despite being an element, exploration of this strategy would offer room to examine how the nurses’ involvement in scheduling might be appropriate in reducing the issues to do with nursing burnout.
Implementation of the Support Programs
Nursing is one of the most stressful professions. In many instances, nurses experience serious levels of burnouts an fatigue that compromise their health. It is always ideal for healthcare organizations to help their nursing staff cope with the pressure of the job through the integration of the support and wellness programs. The strategy would relate to different things such as teaching improved break scheduling, execution of the departmental meetings to talk about health, and creation of the comfortable respite entities for the nurses. The strategy will facilitate the achievement of the objective of the importance of the eradication of the burnout in the nursing profession.
Conclusion
The execution of the capstone project will adhere to the following timeline. The first step will consider meeting with the faculty team and advisors on the topic and developing the project ideas. The second phase will focus on developing the project proposal, submitting the proposal for approval, and acquiring IRB approval. The third phase will concentrate on the collection and analysis of data. The fourth phase will continue with the collection and analysis of data, writing, and submission of drafts, and presentation of the findings through the submission of the final drafts.
References
Garcia, C. D. L., Abreu, L. C. D., Ramos, J. L. S., Castro, C. F. D. D., Smiderle, F. R. N., Santos, J. A. D., & Bezerra, I. M. P. (2019). Influence of burnout on patient safety: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Medicina, 55 (9), 553.
Hall, L. H., Johnson, J., Watt, I., Tsipa, A., & O’Connor, D. B. (2016). Healthcare staff wellbeing, burnout, and patient safety: a systematic review. PloS one , 11 (7), e0159015.
Ross, J. (2016). The connection between burnout and patient safety. Journal of Peri-Anesthesia Nursing , 31 (6), 539-541.
