- IO001 Impact of National Healthcare Issues on the Organization
Student Name
Walden University
IO001: Healthcare Environment
Prof. Name
Submission Date
Impact of National Healthcare Issues on the Organization
One of the key issues in national healthcare is the burnout among employees, in this case, among the nurses of our organization. Patient-to-nurse ratio, long working hours, and unsupportive administration are the issues that contribute to nurse burnout with feelings of emotional stress, detachment, and loss of sense of accomplishment. This issue is extremely critical to the BennieLu Company, its functionality, patient services, and interpersonal relations, as it will be demonstrated further in this paper.
Healthcare Issues/Stressors
The burnout rate among the nurses has been one of the factors that has led to an increase in turnover rates, increased absenteeism, and reduced job satisfaction levels among our staff nurses. We also observe 20% more nurses’ turnover rate within the past year, accompanied by apparent indicators of burnout. It interferes with the delivery of care, has a negative impact on patients in their transition, and there are additional costs incurred because of the migration of costs and necessary training sessions. Additionally, patient satisfaction has been impacted by burnout, and we have registered a 15% drop in the number of points patients have been offering on their satisfaction survey (De Hert, 2020).
Comparing the ideas with the external sources and competency-related sources helps to shed some light on the extent and solve this issue. Correspondingly, in the study by O’Grady & Clavelle (2021) to prevent burnout in nurse managers, the authors draw attention to research-based steps to safeguard nurse managers in terms of bettering the work climate, minimizing the load of work, and cultivating health among nurse managers in the subsystem (O’Grady & Clavelle, 2021).
Another study by Cosmina-Alina Moscu et al. (2023) also demonstrates that clinician well-being pays off in business as well, since it was found that efforts to enhance mental health and well-being in the staff would create healthy returns in terms of turnover and higher-quality patient care (Cosmina-Alina Moscu et al., 2023). Also, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) lists numerous materials and approaches to assisting physicians in becoming healthy and minimizing burnout rates (Durana, 2024).
Issue/Stressor is Being Addressed in Other Organizations
Other health institutions have thus been able to address nurse burnout in nursing care systems by taking various measures. An example has been Sentara Healthcare, which possesses an excellent nursing shared-governance framework giving bedside nurses authority in making sure that their practice ambiance is modified to align with their wants and judgments. It has also helped in curbing burnout rates since the nurses feel more important and have more to contribute to the care delivery process.
With this in mind, Cleveland Clinic has developed a caring-for-caregivers program that involves practice of mindset-training, mental health care therapy, workload management, and other approaches, which allows reducing the burnout of caregivers and increasing their job satisfaction (Cosmina-Alina Moscu et al., 2023). Moreover, the University of Colorado Hospital has developed the Resiliency Program, providing mindfulness training and other practices, including peer support groups and stress reduction classes, so that stress would not make the nurses exhausted and demotivated (National Academy of Medicine, 2021).
Another area Mayo Clinic has been working on is burnout prevention with its Well-Being Index, which we have observed is the type of survey that can be used to generate workforce well-being data, as it is applied to find out the level of burnout of clinicians and offer them resources that would fit them (MyWellBeingIndex, 2020).
Scholarly Literature on Nurse Burnout
According to O’Grady and Clavelle (2021), in order to overcome the elevated cases of burnout among nurses, the culture and quality of work environments had to be improved. They suggest reducing the sources of stress and making efforts towards promoting a positive organizational environment that would help in increasing job satisfaction. They have observed in their study that shared governance helped a lot in increasing the power of nurses (O’Grady & Clavelle, 2021).
Morishita et al (2020) put together the methods to accumulate personal accomplishments and a sense of autonomy in their article, in which they suggested that a sense of equity and social interdependence can be the bottom line and help nurses avoid burnout. This is also obvious in the study by emphasizing professional development and learning, which is continuous.
The same De Hert (2020) affirms that burnout has negative effects on job contentment and patients’ outcomes as well. Therefore, the study supports the need to embrace enhanced Wellness programs and avenues bolstered by organizational support (De Hert, 2020). To the same extent, it means that there should be prevention strategies in place to prevent it from arriving.
The National Academy of Medicine, Durana (2024) has provided solutions on how to prevent burnout in health care practice, such as the need to have effective practices to formulate evidence-based clinical recommendations and health care resources that can support the workers. This source also shows that, in addition to the numerous health-related advantages, there may be considerable financial gains if burnout is minimized with the help of such measures that increase labor productivity and decrease personnel turnover costs.
Synthesis and Integration: Therefore, these sources imply that in order to deal with the problem of nurse burnout, we must not only improve the working conditions and environment but also plan successful and unified wellness promotion among nurses. Almost all targets of organizational culture include organizational-level change, e.g., De Hert (2020) and Durana (2024) target are improvements in the immediate environment, and O’Grady and Clavelle (2021) and Morishita et al. (2020) find the latter at the organizational level. Integrating these approaches will promote the well- being of the nurses and also the health of the patient that has been assigned to them.
Strategies to Address the Organizational Impact
The literature sources offer a number of measures to respond to nurse burnout in the organization:
- Improving Work Environment: According to O’Grady & Clavelle (2021), there is a call to improve the work conditions through minimization of overhead work and streamlining of work processes to provide nurses with more face-to-face time with patients (O’Grady & Clavelle, 2021; Shanafelt et al., 2017).
- Resilience Training: As part of its comprehensive program, the Cleveland Clinic has integrated resilience training for its nurses to equip them with strategies of stress management.
- Mental Health Support: Offering Nurses Mental Health resources and support groups may alleviate burnout, as presented by the Cleveland Clinic’s plan or cases (Cosmina-Alina Moscu et al., 2023) (Durana, 2024).
- Workload Adjustments: It can be combatted by intervening in workloads and staffing; proper patient-nurse ratios have been highlighted to decrease burnout, an issue exemplified by Sentara Healthcare through the shared governance model (O’Grady & Clavelle, 2021) (Durana, 2024).
- Leadership Engagement: Another suggested strategy by O’Grady & Clavelle (2021) and Morishita et al. (2020) to reduce burnout levels is that leadership ensures that it frequently communicates with the nursing staff to check for the first signs of burnout and ensures that the needed support is offered (O’Grady & Clavelle, 2021; Morishita et al., 2020).
Implementing these strategies /several positive and negative impacts:
Positive Impacts:
- Improved Job Satisfaction: Promoting the quality of the work environment and facilitating access to mental health care means higher levels of satisfaction with the conditions of nurses’ work, their retention, and subsequently the quality of services offered to patients (De Hert, 2020; Moyo et al., 2023).
- Better Patient Outcomes: While having more direct contact with the patient and reducing the time spent on administrative work, nurses’ patient care quality becomes higher; therefore, the patients’ satisfaction rates will be higher as well (De Hert, 2020; Moyo et al., 2023).
- Increased Retention: Recovery-based training and simple modifications on the existing workload can decrease burnout, which will increase the nurse retention ratio and will ultimately lower the recruitment and training expenses (Bazmi et al., 2019; Moyo et al., 2023).
Negative Impacts:
- Initial Costs: Enacting these strategies necessitates resource procurement in the form of training initiatives, counseling services, and the acquisition of additional personnel to accommodate workload changes (Bazmi et al., 2019) (Moyo et al., 2023).
- Organizational Disruption: High turnover rates, changes in patient flow, staff mix, and productivity may lead to initial staff concerns over changes in ratios such as patient-to-nurse, to the extent that the reductions in these ratios are viewed negatively by staff, they may hinder the delivery of care (Bazmi et al., 2019) (Moyo et al., 2023).
- Cultural Shift: Of course, enforcing leadership engagement and supportive context at work presupposes a shift in organizational culture, which may entail certain opposition from some of the employees (Moyo et al., 2023).
Through their step-by-step approach, our organization can reduce the issue of nurse burnout and thus lead to better staff and the health of our patients. Implementation of these measures shall also demand some form of investment and dedication, but they are vital for the survival and productivity of the organization in the future.
Conclusion
This problem statement is necessary to our organization because it involves nurses as a vital part of the organization, which causes high turnover rates and results in high rates of absenteeism, among other implications on patient satisfaction. The claimed factors include promotion of wellness programs, structural changes, and better leadership integration in the role of organizations in helping reduce high rates of employee turnover among nurses. Such strategies, when used following the scholastic resuscitations, can make an enormous positive difference in the workplace, reduce burnout, and enhance patient care.
It’s recommended that our organization (Sentara Healthcare) apply a diverse perspective for dealing with nurse burnout. This must include implementing typical management frameworks, providing and encouraging wellbeing and career advancement amongst personnel, enhancing the psychological wellbeing of employees, and making suitable alterations to workload. Maintaining a good workplace culture: Managers and leaders ought to be cautious and participate in identifying and controlling the symptoms of burnout. The strategies addressed above will help in coming up with a nurse working environment that will safeguard and lead to betterment of the quality of patient care that patients receive and the health and well-being of nurses.
References
Cosmina-Alina Moscu, Marina, V., Aurelian-Dumitrache Anghele, Mihaela Anghele, Dragomir, L., & Ciubara, A. (2023). The Impact of Work-Related Problems on Burnout Syndrome and Job Satisfaction Levels among Emergency Department Staff. Behavioral Sciences, 13(7), 575–575. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13070575
De Hert, S. (2020). Burnout in healthcare workers: Prevalence, impact and preventative strategies. Local and Regional Anesthesia, 13, 171–183. https://doi.org/10.2147/lra.s240564
Durana, J. (2024, June 5). National Academy of Medicine Launches Commission to Identify Transformative Strategies for Health System Performance – National Academy of Medicine. National Academy of Medicine. https://nam.edu/national-academy-of-medicine-launches-commission-to-identify-transformative-strategies-for-health-system-performance/
Moyo, E., Dzobo, M., Moyo, P., Murewanhema, G., Chitungo, I., & Dzinamarira, T. (2023). Burnout among healthcare workers during public health emergencies in sub-Saharan Africa: Contributing factors, effects, and prevention measures. Human Factors in Healthcare, 100039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hfh.2023.100039
O’Grady, T. P., & Clavelle, J. T. (2021). Transforming Shared Governance. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 51(4), 206–211. https://doi.org/10.1097/nna.0000000000000999