Caregiver Burnout: The Relationship With Assessment Answer

Providing care to older adults suffering from dementia is really stressful for nursing practitioners and this often becomes the reason of nurses’ burnout. It is to be noted that individuals involved in the profession of care-giving and nursing “have been found to be vulnerable to the development of burnout and research has suggested a relationship between dementia care and burnout. Literature suggests, that the development of burnout may be linked to a number of factors, including lack of reciprocity, low self-efficacy and organizational factors” (Duffy, Oyebode & Allen, 2009).

It is noteworthy that the importance of counteracting burnout in the care of patient suffering from dementia has to be stressed and emphasized keeping in mind the effective and noble role that nursing practitioners play in terms of providing care to older adults. Patient of dementia often fails to reciprocate to the care processes provided by the nursing practitioner and this feeling of lack of feedback impacts negatively on the psychological condition of the concerned nursing professional. In this regard it must be taken into account that “Regression analysis showed that ‘experience of feed-back at work’ and ‘time spent at present place of work’ were the most important factors when explaining burnout among the staff” (Astrom et al., 1991).

Whenever the nursing practitioner feels that he/she is not getting the needed feedback or reciprocation, their morale alleviates and the degree of motivation lowers. All these result in nurses’ burnout in a thorough manner. From the perspective of personal value it has been believed that nursing professionals try their best to provide thorough care to patient suffering from dementia but when they gradually start understanding that they are not experiencing reciprocation or they do not have the access to proper resources, they become stressed and exhausted (Edberg et al., 2008).

In other words it can be said that “The nurses’ experience could be understood as a desire to do the best for the people in their care by trying to alleviate their suffering and enhance their quality of life. When they did not have the resources, opportunity or ability to do this, it caused strain” (Edberg et al., 2008). Moreover, it should be taken into account that most of the investigations exploring the effects of stress and burnout on the health of nurses working in acute care and long term care settings have found that those nursing practitioners who are devoted to providing care to demented patients are the ones who suffer from exhaustion/burnout more than their counterparts providing care to different type of patients suffering from different type of ailment (Jennings, 2008). 

Nurses’ burnout is a serious issue that should be addressed and the problem must be mitigated in a proper manner. But it must be noted that nursing leadership must come forward to contribute to the mitigation of this problem. Nurses have their own roles to play in order to alleviate the degree of burnout. Some specific interventions must be performed in order to reduce nurses’ burnout. The first intervention would be to guide the nurses properly to air their voice against overwork and undue stresses produced by undue pressures.

The second intervention that must be performed is that; nursing leaders must recognize the demands placed by the nurses and they must validate the nurses’ concerns, and through best practices and common sense, use the leadership skills to provide support to the exhausted nurses (Bettencourt, 2017). It must be noted that if nursing leaders can show their support explicitly then the nurses would feel more empowered and less exhausted. Finally, training must be provided to nursing professionals in order to cope with job-related anxieties and stress.

Such training sessions should put emphasis on individual growth and development of nurses and their ability to cope with stress and burnout. One must take into account the fact that validation lowers nurses’ stress levels because they start feeling that their problems are being heard. It should be noted that “Open dialogue provides the nursing leader a forum to foster best practices, find workable solutions for departmental issues, and teach leadership skills through mentoring sessions” (Bettencourt, 2017). 

In conclusion, the primary purpose of the paper had been to discuss, analyze and evaluate the issue of nursing burnout as it is related to providing care to older adult. The paper did strive for establishing a relationship between nursing burnout and care-providing to older adults. Moreover, the paper specifically discussed about the relationship between providing care to patients suffering from dementia and nursing burnout.

References

Astrom, S., Nilsson, M., Norberg, A., Sandman, P., & Winblad, B. (1991). Staff burnout in dementia care—relations to empathy and attitudes. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 28(1), 65-75.

Bettencourt, E. (2017). Hospital Impact: Nurse Leadership's Role In Reducing Burnout. Retrieved February 8, 2018, from http://blog.diversitynursing.com/blog/hospital-impact-nurse-leaderships-role-in-reducing-burnout.

Duffy, B., Oyebode, J.R., & Allen, J. (2009). Burnout among care staff for older adults with dementia: The role of reciprocity, self-efficacy and organizational factors. Dementia, 8(4), 515-541.

Edberg, A., Bird, M., Richards, D.A., Woods, R., Keeley, P., & Davis-Quarrell, V. (2008). Strain in nursing care of people with dementia: Nurses’ experience in Australia, Sweden and United Kingdom. Aging & Mental Health, 12(2), 236-243.

Jennings, B.M. (2008). Chapter 26: Work Stress and Burnout Among Nurses: Role of the Work Environment and Working Conditions. In R.G. Hughes (Ed.) Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US). 

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