The purpose of this paper is to develop an educational health plan aimed at a particular population in my work setting. The targeted health behavior with the desired outcome will be stated, and the health promotion was teaching appropriate to and tailored to the work environment will be discussed. Statistics, theory, strategies, and evidence-based knowledge will be included. Barriers, cost, time-frame, and evaluation will also be considered. And, the guidelines of an appropriate theory will be chosen for planning the educational health program.
Targeted health behavior and the desired outcome
Starting a new career, moving to a new city, and attempting to learn new job roles and responsibilities can be overwhelming to most people. Imagine the stress of moving to a new country and having to learn the language and cultural skills in addition to your other responsibilities. My workplace offers educational opportunities for visiting students, fellows, residents, scientists, and practitioners from around the world. According to Pender, Murdaugh, and Parsons, “One of the greatest sources of stress is created by the workplace” (2015). Helping alleviate the stress new practitioner’s encounter as they enter new educational forums and the workforce is a task nurse can play a vital role in.
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Health promotion teaching appropriate to organizational needs and the staff
According to Mayo Clinic, long-term stress in addition to its related elevated levels of cortisol and stress hormones can result in increased risks for a whole host of conditions such as a headache, heart disease, memory impairment and digestive problem (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002). It is important for individuals to eat right and engage in physical exercise and enough sleep to protect themselves from stress. Health nutrition will give the body enough fuel and this should include including antioxidant rich foods that will help to counteract the cellular damage that stress can cause. Secondly, exercise is considered as a suitable stress reliever since it stimulates the body to release endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. Lastly, physical activities play a fundamental role because it promotes deeper and more restful sleep that will help an individual to feel more restored and less fatigued. According to Cartwright & Cooper, (2002), it is important that every employee should be able to recognize when he or she feels stress, try and reframe the situation to manage the stress and focus on what one can control and accept one one cannot control hence combating stress.
Causal factors and areas to target for intervention
Numerous factors often cause stress at a workplace; therefore, there is the need to understand potential causal factors of importance when developing an intervention. The following are the major causal factors for stress at the organization (Tytherleigh et al, 2005). Overload as a causal factor is related to the extent to which an individual feels the demand of workload and the related time pressures resulting to stress. At my work place, employees often experience unrealistic deadlines and expectation from the management or supervisors which lead to mounting pressure (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002).
Technology overload also has been associated with increased stress while newly recruited employees are presented with the unmanageable workload that stresses them. Understaffing of employees to perform work that has been timetabled further creates mounting pressure that translates into stress. Control, on the other hand, causes stress where pressure experienced by employees is firmly connected to the control’s perception (Tytherleigh et al, 2005). Arguably, most of the juniors and newly recruited staffs at the organization are not involved in the decision making process, and lack of authority and influence over a part of the job makes them feel less engaged contributing to stress.
A working relationship is another major causal factor of workplace stress. It is evident that most of the jobs demand regular and constant contact with other staffs but in a situation of poor and unsupportive relationship with a colleague or the supervisors can be a source of pressure that causes stress (Cartwright & Cooper, 2002).Most new employees often experience greater levels of isolation, and there are instances where their colleagues unjustly treat them. At my workplace, typical causes of the weak relationship among staff are caused by isolation at work, aggressive style of management in addition to the lack of support from colleagues.
Job security is also a causal factor where the employees are not assured of their job security while on the other, job changes causes increased pressure. The most affected group of employees by this causal factor is the underperforming employees. Other causes of job insecurity that causes intense stress among the employees at my workplace include the fear of skill redundancy, lack of job permanence in addition to the future job changes (Tytherleigh et al, 2005).
The last cause of stress among employees at my workplace is related to the work-life balance. Studies have shown that the demand for work in most instances might spill over influencing an individual and home-life of an employee resulting in increased strain on their relationship outside the workplace (Tytherleigh et al, 2005). Longer working hours particularly when some of my colleagues are expected to work extra hours at home affects their personal, partner and family relationship resulting in stress. Other factors that have been shown to impact work-life balance include unsocial hours, excessive travel time in addition to inflexible work schedules.
Educational plan tailored to new practitioners
Stress has been a major problem for a majority of the new professionals at the organization hence the need to come up with an educational plan that would help to equip the new practitioners with strategic skills that would assist them to manage their stress (Tytherleigh et al, 2005). Below is the education plan that would be adopted and implemented:
Step 1-Identify the hazards
The following will be used used to identify the hazards at the organization:
Increased sickness absence taking into consideration the
Declining employee productivity and quality
Failure to keep time
Increasing staff turnover
Declining employee morale
Step 2- The most affected employees
Every staff at the organization is at the risk of stress; however, it would be important to focus on the following groups as the most affected: employees who were away to attend the bereavement ceremony for a long time and those were is reporting at work after a long time due to stress-related c health condition. Other groups of employees mostly affected are those with marital or family problems.
Step 3-How employees are affected by stress
Below are the numerous ways employees can be affected by stress;
Culture- To determine whether there has been any form of poor communication or a blame culture
Demand-whether employees are overwhelmed with too many roles and lack critical training
Control- To determine if employees have authority over certain functions
Relationships- To determine if there are cases of bullying and harassment
Change- to understand if there is any form of job insecurity
Step 4- Develop an action plan
The following are potential strategies that will be adopted and implemented:
Provide opportunities and culture for staff to contribute ideas
Have an effective communication strategy
Encourage employees to develop an adequate work-life balance
Providing additional and critical training in areas that are of greater concern
Step 5- Monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring would be done at every step while and evaluation would be conducted at the end of the implementation of the plan to determine its effectiveness which would be done after two months. Evaluation of the plan will determine whether the rates of the following have increased, reduced or has remained constant: sickness’ absence, productivity and work quality timekeeping, staff turnover and morale
Statistics, theory, targeted strategies and evidence-based knowledge
Work-related stress can lead to burnout as seen with a decreased sense of personal accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization (Tytherleigh et al, 2005). Burnout is associated with job dissatisfaction, absenteeism, and high turnover rates. Studies show resident physicians have the highest rates of burnout, with internal medicine and pediatric residents at 40% - 76% and surgery residents at 47% - 70%. One study involved nurses and resident physicians in training workshops to improve communication and role conflict. Psychotherapists led the workshops, and final evaluation revealed the group showed higher on Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) including inner directedness, self-acceptance, and synergy. Meditation was also shown to improve mood disturbances associated with burnout (McCray, Cronholm, Bogner, Gallo, and Neill, 2008).
Patient-centric and culturally sensitive interventions
Inability to communication from lack of knowledge of the language in different demographics can lead to inappropriate care and errors with health care. Misunderstanding information and avoiding clarification can cause further issues. Interpreters are necessary to ensure proper communication is being portrayed. Learning the social customs of the area including shaking hands, eye contact, and touching need to be identified in order to be successful with health education. Religious and spiritual practices should be respected as well. Different cultures have different word meanings and different body language. Teaching should be done in the language of the participants for the program to be successful (Pender et al., 2015).
Considerations: Costs, barriers, time-frame, and evaluation
The organization would provide the cost of implementing the educational plan; however, it would significantly increase the organization’s cost of operation. In the long run, the benefits of the plan would be more than the cost because the level of stress will decrease resulting in increased productivity and profitability. The potential barrier would be an unwillingness of some staff to change especially those in the management. To address this, the staff will be informed and encouraged to accept the change because it would benefit the organization and all the employees. Due to time constrained, the plan would have to run for two months to save on the resources and save on time. Lastly, an evaluation would be conducted after the implementation of the plan to determine whether it was successful in meeting the set objective or not regarding lowering the levels of stress among the employees.
Chosen theory and educational method based on suggested guidelines
An appropriate theory for the planned health education program is the theories of stress and coping. Theories of Stress focuses on a particular relationship between the demand (stressors) and the bodily processes (stress) (Sharma, 2017). One of the stress theories is the systemic Stress also referred to as Selye's Theory. According to Selye, various stimulus events applied intensely and for long causes effects that constitute the stereotypical such as a particular response pattern of the systemic stress. Such stress is viewed as a condition often apparent through signs such as nonspecifically stimulated changes within the biologic system. Further, the stereotypical response pattern, tend to occur in the phases. Alarm reaction is the first step, and it entails initial shock phase in addition to subsequent counter shock phase. The second stage is where noxious stimulation persists, and the organism enters a resistance stage. Lastly, in a situation where aversive stimulation goes on for a long time, the current resistance would result into exhaustion phase. The capability of an organism to adjust to a specified stressor would become worn out causing the reappearance of phase one signs, and at the same time, resistance would not occur (Sharma, 2017).
The Lazarus stress coping theory is suitable to equip an individual with skills critical in managing stress. The central ideas in this theory are an appraisal and coping meant to handle a particular demand. Therefore an individual after identifying an appraising the source and nature of stress, he or she evaluates the likelihood to generate some form of behavior and cognitive operation that would help to impact appropriate encounter optimistically (Sharma, 2017). According to Lazarus theory, coping is simply the cognitive and behavioral attempt aimed at mastering, tolerating and reducing both external and internal demands and conflicts. An individual can change the current person-environment reality that causes the negative stress and emotions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the paper has developed an educational health plan targeting the new practitioners in my work place setting to manage stress. Arguably, stress is a major problem at the organization because whenever employees become stressed their productivity and quality decreases which affect the profitability of the company. When effectively adopted and implemented, the proposed educational plan would be helpful regarding equipping the new practitioners with necessary skills and create awareness on causes, impact, and solution to prevent stress.
References
Cartwright, S., & Cooper, C. L. (2002). ASSET: An organisational stress screening tool—The management guide. Manchester, UK: RCL Ltd .
McCray, L. W., Cronholm, P. F., Bogner, H. R., Gallo, J. J., & Neill, R. A. (2008). Resident
Physician Burnout: Is There Hope? Family Medicine , 40 (9), 626–632
Pender, N., Murdaugh, C., & Parsons, M. A. (2015). Health promotion in nursing practice (7 th
ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Sharma, M. (2017). Theoretical foundations of health education and health promotion.
(3rd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
Tytherleigh*, M. Y., Webb, C., Cooper, C. L., & Ricketts, C. (2005). Occupational stress in UK higher education institutions: A comparative study of all staff categories. Higher Education Research & Development , 24 (1), 41-61.
