Nurses on Strike: How Tech and Process Improvements Can Prevent Burnout
Nursing staffs across America have been going on strike recently, and when you consider their working conditions, it’s no surprise. Nurses are constantly working long hours that are both physically and mentally exhausting. But if we know what makes the job so difficult, we can compensate with technology.
Grueling hours
Due to chronic staffing shortages, nurses usually are expected to work 12-hour shifts, often during odd hours or through the night. These 12-hour shifts would be bad enough if you were working a desk job or retail, but nursing involves grueling, emotionally and physically exhausting work and hours on your feet attending to tasks across the building. The conditions nurses are expected to work in make hiring to ease the load more difficult. It’s also hard to have a productive environment when everyone is entirely worn out.
Intense busy work
Many nurse responsibilities are functionally busy work. Nurses are trained healthcare professionals who frequently are required to perform tasks having little or nothing to do with their education or expertise. These chores include disinfecting surfaces, delivering samples, guiding hospital visitors where they need to go, etc. While these tasks are necessary, they don’t make use of a nurse’s qualifications. They’re additional baggage on the shoulders of already overburdened nurses, and they prevent nurses from focusing on patient care — the job they were hired to do.
Emotional exhaustion
Physical exhaustion often goes hand-in-hand with emotional exhaustion — a major work hazard for nurses. When you’re constantly exposed to sickness, death, grief, and despair, it can be difficult to carry this weight. Taking care of people who may be experiencing the worst times of their lives with little chance to process it emotionally would be challenging for anyone. Then, once you add the risk of workplace violence, you can only imagine the emotional toll nurses face.
On top of the physical exhaustion, emotional strain causes nurses to be particularly susceptible to burnout. Not only can burnout have severe mental health consequences on nurses, but it can also prevent patients from receiving the best possible care.
How technology can help
The main cause for many of the issues plaguing nurses is already widely understood: Hospitals are understaffed, forcing nurses to work longer hours and perform more tasks. One way technology can help is by taking over the nurses’ busy work, such as delivering samples, disinfecting, and doing laundry. Healthcare robots are a promising option for those looking to automate these types of tasks. Automation software can also better manage workflows to ensure nurses spend less time walking across the hospital and more time working with patients.
Unfortunately, emotional exhaustion doesn’t have a direct technological solution. The only way to deal with burnout is to take time to rest. But technology can help. Not only can automation, through robots and workflow management, provide nurses with more opportunities to rest, but other time-consuming chores like updating patient boards can be managed with communications technology. Stress can also be eased by using technology to improve security and protect nurses from violence, as well as by providing intuitive and easier ways to do things with less work.
Technology has the potential to lift some of the burden off nurses caused by recent staffing issues. Automation — both robotic and digital — can cover nonpatient-focused work, freeing nurses from some of their most physically exhausting duties. It can also allow for shorter work hours, so staff can rest and recover from emotional exhaustion. With the proper application of technology, we can better support nurses when and where they need it most.
To learn more about how technology can help prevent nurse burnout at your healthcare facility, visit trlsystems.com.