Stress management and nurse burnout: The role of management

Stress is a physical, mental, physiological, or spiritual response to a stressor.  A stressor is an experience in a person-environment relationship evaluated by a person as taxing or threatening the sense of wellbeing (Huber, 2010, p.131).  Stress is a subjective experience of an individual in response to their environment.  Work overload or underload can lead to physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, attitudinal exhaustion, and feelings of decreased accomplishments.  This experience is recognized as burnout.  Burnout is a term used to describe a response to chronic emotional stress.  Huber (2010) characterized burnout by three components:

1.       Emotional and/or physical exhaustion

2.      Lower job productivity

3.      Over depersonalization. (p.132).

“Nursing burnout is the terminal phase of the individual’s failure to resolve work stress or accumulated inability to cope with day to day job stress.”(Huber, 2010, p.132).  The high stress/emotional work environment, real or perceived short staffing, increased workload, increased concerns about client safety and the nurses' ability to cope and deliver adequate services can contribute to stress and burnout (Huber, 2010).    

So we understand burnout…how does that affect the manager or the institution?  Both the nurse and the employer have a stake in the management of stress and stressful environments.  High levels of job stress/burnout can affect the following:

§  Individual nurse health (a healthy nurse is an effective and reliable nurse)

§  Job satisfaction (a satisfied employee is more productive)

§  Absenteeism (adequate hospital staffing is vital to the institution to be able to provide patient care)

§  Turnover (hiring and training new nurses is timely and expensive $$)

§  Client welfare (the goal of healthcare organizations is often to provide quality patient care maintaining the client welfare as the top priority) (Huber, 2010).

An organization needs satisfied customers to remain competitive.  Nursing personnel

constitutes the largest group of healthcare providers in the United States (Huber, 2010,

p.319).  With nursing personnel making up the largest part of the healthcare workforce,

healthcare organizations cannot thrive without healthy, happy, and high functioning

nursing staff.  

Empowerment of staff nurses has been related to increased work satisfaction and lower burnout rates (Huber, 2010, p.130).  Stress reduction techniques and promotion of autonomy is important for a nurse manager to understand.  It is the responsibility of the management and institution to promote stress reduction for the nursing staff and hospital employees.      

 Huber, D. L. (Ed.). (2010). Leadership and nursing care management (4th ed.). Maryland Heights, MO: Saunders Elsevier.