Nurse Fatigue

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Do you ever find yourself feeling tired at work? Many people can relate to this phenomenon and in extreme cases it is called fatigue. Fatigue is a feeling of exhaustion that may hinder the ability of a person to carry out actions physically or thoughts mentally. Symptoms include depression, irritability, decrease in alertness, decline in performance, and elongated reaction time. Now with that information, imagine the danger of having a job that involves holding someone’s life in your hands while feeling fatigued. We’re talking about nursing. How safe can this situation be for the public if the nurse taking care of them is exhausted? Many nurses find this to be the norm now instead of the rare exception and that needs to change.
So why is this happening to our once beloved alert and cheerful nurses? Studies are showing a significant impact on nursing fatigue from insufficient sleep related to work schedules as well as exhaustion from extended patient load and elongated work shifts. When working night and rotating shifts, nurses have been shown to obtain 1 to 4 hours less sleep than usual. Information gathered from 11,387 shifts has shown that nurses left work on time less than once per every six shifts. This information also showed that nurses worked on average 49 to 55 minutes extra during those shifts. (Rogers …show more content…
Nurses have been scared to refuse assignments or just thought they had to deal with a unreasonable patient to nurse ratio but communication between nurse and administration could have impacted the issue head on. An education campaign should be run throughout hospitals for nurses to understand fatigue and the need for adequate rest to provide safe quality care. The more nurses that recognize and confront their own or a colleagues fatigue, the more errors or harm

Nurse Fatigue

nursing fatigue and the quality of patient care. As frontline providers of care, nurses face a multitude of challenges that can impact both their well-being and the quality of healthcare services they deliver. This paper gains insights from various identified studies. By examining existing research, we seek to understand the impact of fatigue on nursing professionals and its potential implications for patient outcomes and healthcare quality. Nurse Fatigue and Patient Care Compassion fatigue and burnout…

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Summary: Nurse Compassion Fatigue

Journal Week 12: Nurse Compassion Fatigue vs. Nurse Burnout May is the nurse manager on the metabolic unit. She has obtained her BSN degree from Saint Mary’s College and is currently enrolled in graduate school for her public health nurse administrator degree. I asked May questions in regards to possible leadership and management issues that she personally faced on the detox/metabolic unit. She stated that a nurse who she went to school with six years ago had one occurrence report that pushed her…

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Why Do Nurses Have 12-Hour Shifts

When nurses first started out, the norm was to work an 8-Hour shift, 5 days per week, but hospitals are now implementing new shifts at hospitals. The 12-Hour shifts first started in the 1980s in response to a large nursing shortage. The baby boomers are now the main source of workers for the largest group of health professionals in the United States. Nurses working 12-Hour shifts, though, may not be the answer to America’s problem. With the long hours comes more medical errors, more fatigue, and…

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Nursing Fatigue

Topic of Interest: I chose to explore nursing fatigue and patient care as a nursing student because of its profound impact on the nursing field. The prevalence of fatigue among nurses presents a serious challenge for healthcare facilities globally, directly affecting the standard of care provided to patients. This topic resonates with me personally, as I have family members who are nurses and have experienced the struggle of nurse shortages. This issue has become increasingly relevant in recent years…

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Spirituality Compassion Fatigue Final Essay

Combating Compassion Fatigue for Nurses Combating Compassion Fatigue for Nurses The role of the nurse when taking care of a patient will encompass many tasks. This means everything from giving pain medication, education on disease process, making the bed, assisting the patient to the bathroom, or being present in a time of emotional distress. The nurse will always work to meet the needs of the patient to promote overall health. What this consistent requirement of the role of the nurse can create is compassion…

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Essay Ethics: Nurse and Consideration Client Safety

levels of stress and high levels of fatigue (Winwood et al. 2006). The needs of patients and hospitals put nurses under considerable pressure (Shiau et al. 1999). Many became nurses because of a deep desire to help others, that our contributions through clinical nursing are valuable. This has led to the idea that nurses must be impervious to fatigue. Unfortunately, nurses are human and as humans, we are also imperfect. The general public has come to view nurses as the provider of comfort while hospitalized…

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Compassion Fatigue

Begins Within the Mind: Nurses’ overall physical and mental health is greatly affected by the unrealistic workloads and expectations set on them. Consequently, this toll leads to compassion burnout and lower quality of care for patients. Compassion fatigue isn't the only mental or emotional challenge nurses face, “Post-traumatic stress disorder is another commonly reported diagnosis among health care workers.50% of health care workers reported this diagnosis, with nurses representing the most…

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Alarm Fatigue Research Paper

Abstract Alarm fatigue has become a hot topic of discussion in the healthcare field. The subject matter is an ever-increasing problem as patient safety is at stake and warrants further research. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the nursing phenomena of alarm fatigue to increase awareness and develop methods to help eliminate the problem and improve patient outcomes. The concept of alarm fatigue will be analyzed using an eight-step method from Walker and Avant (2011) that is widely…

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Compassion Fatigue, Caregiver Burnout, And Other Related Issues

Topic of Compassion Fatigue, Caregiver Burnout, and other Related Issues. Robert J. Lopez Grand Canyon University: HLT-310V | Combating Compassion Fatigue October 26, 2014 Abstract As Health Care Providers we will come across many different faiths, Religious cultures and beliefs during our practice. This alone can place a lot of stress, which mean fatigue, burnout and other related issues that may effect on how well we will care for their patients. But losing sight compassion fatigue and of burnout which…

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Case Study: Compassion Fatigue

need for training on a person level based on the “compassion fatigue” and “sadness [and] despair” that individual nurses experienced. Finally, the hospital assessed a need for training on a task level by identifying that the nurses “failed to deliver quality care, when they fail to notice or correctly interpret patient’s needs.” The nurses were not adequately fulfilling their required tasks. Overall, the problem of “compassion fatigue” required training because of the problems it caused on an organizational…

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