Download Burnout 3
Laquanda Gede
How common is burnout in nursing? Very. Results from a 2020 survey indicate that almost two-thirds of nurses (62%) experience burnout. It's especially common among younger nurses, with 69% of nurses under 25 reporting burnout. This issue affects all hospitals and health care systems in the U.S.
There are many causes of nurse burnout. Some causes are inherent to the job: providing compassionate care, working long hours, changing shift schedules, and being on your feet for hours at a time can all place serious demands on nurses. Other causes of nurse burnout derive from systemic challenges facing the health care system. For instance, aging baby boomers and the pandemic have increased the demand for nursing professionals. A shortage of nurses has, in turn, led to more or longer shifts and placed greater demands on individual nurses during each shift.
Burnout can also be caused by moral injury - which is a psychological wound that happens when a person feels they must take actions, or witness actions, that violate their deeply held moral beliefs. The term also describes the challenges of knowing what kind of care your patients need but being unable to provide that care due to factors beyond your control. The pandemic has also led to an increased amount of repeated moral injury, which is contributing to burnout in nurses.
Fortunately, despite the serious consequences of nurse burnout, it's possible to manage this condition by paying attention to your mental and physical well-being. The best way to manage nurse burnout is through prevention. Learning to identify the early warning signs is the first step toward avoiding a problem that puts you and your patients at risk.
If you notice any of the early warning signs of nurse burnout, a few strategies can help you resolve it before it becomes a more serious problem. If you're already suffering burnout, these strategies can help you alleviate your symptoms and get back to enjoying your job and providing the best patient care possible:
In this three-part series, we examine 15 workplace factors that correlate highly with employee burnout. First, we discuss the top five causes of burnout, then we look at the next five factors to consider from a management perspective. In the final article, we explore the last five factors, which focus on what organizations can do to prevent burnout.
Organizations are facing an employee burnout crisis. A recent Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 23% of employees reported feeling burned out at work very often or always, while an additional 44% reported feeling burned out sometimes. That means about two-thirds of full-time workers experience burnout on the job.
Although burnout has become "just part of the job" for many workers, the hard organizational cost of burnout is substantial: Burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking a different job. And even if they stay, they typically have 13% lower confidence in their performance and are half as likely to discuss how to approach performance goals with their manager.
And not surprisingly, the effects of burnout don't stop at the office door. Employees who consistently experience high levels of burnout are two times more likely to strongly agree that the amount of time their job takes makes it difficult to fulfill their family responsibilities. Even scarier, burned-out employees are 23% more likely to visit the emergency room.
In most situations, however, this is a false dichotomy. The main factors that cause employee burnout have less to do with expectations for hard work and high performance -- and more to do with how someone is managed.
When employees strongly agree that they are often treated unfairly at work, they are 2.3 times more likely to experience a high level of burnout. Unfair treatment can include everything from bias, favoritism and mistreatment by a coworker to unfair compensation or corporate policies.
Manager support and frequent communication provide a psychological buffer, so employees know that even if something goes wrong, their manager has their back. Employees who strongly agree that they feel supported by their manager are about 70% less likely to experience burnout on a regular basis.
When employees say they often or always have enough time to do all of their work, they are 70% less likely to experience high burnout. Granted, there are some professions that will always have extreme time constraints -- like paramedics or firefighters. Not surprisingly, people in these roles are at high risk for burnout. In other fields, however, time constraints are often imposed by people who do not know how long it takes to deliver quality work or great customer service.
You can prevent -- and reverse -- burnout by changing how you manage and lead your employees. If you don't address the true causes of employee burnout in your organization, you won't have a workplace environment that empowers employees to feel and perform their best.
If you are a leader with limited resources to spend on reducing burnout, focus on the five factors above to yield your best return on investment. And don't miss the next article, which will discuss the next five factors that predict burnout among your employees, with additional insights on the role managers play in reducing burnout.
It's common in any work environment to hear people toss around "burnout" as a buzzword when they are feeling overstressed and underappreciated. According to Gallup, 23% of employees report feeling burnout at work very often or always, while an additional 44% reported feeling it sometimes.
But what does burnout really mean? The World Health Organization (WHO) has weighed in on the problem by taking the significant step of adding burnout to its International Classification of Diseases. Here's how they are defining it:
Employers who are able to get ahead of the burnout curve will gain a distinct advantage over their competitors. Not only will employees be healthier and happier, but they will produce more, deliver better service to customers and clients, have significantly more loyalty to the organization, reduced absenteeism and contribute more to the bottom line than their burnt-out colleagues.
Your first step towards tackling the issue is to measure where you are starting from. If you've never assessed your team's burnout before, there's no need to make this fancy or complicated. A simple survey tool with the right questions will give you a benchmark to work from, and The National Academy of Medicine offers access to different validated instruments to help you construct your assessment.
Chronic stress at work can lead to burnout, a syndrome defined by the World Health Organization as including depleted energy, exhaustion, negativity, cynicism and reduced productivity. baona/Getty Images hide caption
Despite earlier reports to the contrary, WHO does not classify the problem as a medical condition. It calls burnout an "occupational phenomenon" and includes it in a chapter on "factors influencing health status or contact with health services."
According to WHO, burnout is characterized by "feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy."
The earlier definition "was kind of this weird in-between 'you're not really sick, but you're not fully capable of doing your work,' " says Torsten Voigt, a sociologist at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, who published a review of existing studies on burnout in 2017.
"People who feel burnout are finally fully recognized as having a severe issue," he says. The new definition may be a step toward making it easier for people to get help, at least in some European countries, where health professionals rely on the ICD, he says.
Bringing more clarity to the definition of burnout is important, says Elaine Cheung, a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "There needs to be greater critical discussion on how we can more precisely measure and define this condition," she said in a statement.
She says employers have a big role in addressing burnout by paying attention to whether employees have a sense of community at work, strong social relationships, a collegial environment, a workload that's not too burdensome, a sense of agency at work, and a healthy work-life balance.
While burnout has long been a widespread workplace phenomenon, rates spiked during the pandemic. Amid lockdowns, caring responsibilities and a public-health emergency, global data shows more workers reported feeling chronic stress and exhaustion: according to a March 2021 study of 1,500 US workers by hiring platform Indeed 67% of respondents believed burnout had increased during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In theory, flexible working arrangements would mean increased work-life balance, productivity and well-being for employees. Conversations around burnout have increased, and companies seem to be more willing to offer employees perks such as gym memberships and home-office expenses that, intuitively, should help mitigate stressors driving burnout.
While extreme working culture and gruelling hours have been glamorised in some cases, the conversation around burnout has largely shifted to recognise its seriousness. Data has been a part of this evolution in attitude: a May 2021 study by WHO and the International Labour Organization suggested that an estimated three-quarters of a million people die annually from ischaemic heart disease and stroke, due to working long hours.
Burnout can happen to anyone. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, 71% of knowledge workers experienced burnout at least once in 2020. Of those workers, nearly half of respondents (46%) cited being overworked as a key factor contributing to burnout.
Like the various signs of burnout, there are a variety of burnout causes. In general, each cause leads to a central tipping point: when work-related stress or pressure becomes too much or goes on for too long. This leads to burnout.
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