Impact of COVID-19 on Nursing Burnout

 

A registered nurse (RN) takes care of the sick, disabled, injured, and convalescent, and, in doing this, the nurse administers care, treatment, medications, and other therapeutic and rehabilitative procedures under the direction of physicians. Nursing is predominantly emotionally and physically draining due to the intense occupational demands from nurses and interaction with demanding patients and their families. This is even worse when nursing burnout results from the inability to offer quality care due to increased workload, leading to nurses experiencing increased stress. Compassion fatigue and increased workloads are increasingly becoming a challenging manifestation of increased work-related stress in RNs, leading to job-related injuries. Although burnout will inevitably impact the worker, it could also have far-reaching negative consequences regarding the care provided by the nurse. This critical research paper examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on registered nurses' (RNs) burnout.

Research Objective

This study sought to evaluate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on RN burnout regarding how they are likely to care for Covid-19 patients and develop potential mitigation strategies to avoid future occurrences of increased burnout. A research study by Bruyneel et al. (2021) examined the objective, hypotheses, and research questions ascertained that the overall goal of the study was to examine nurses' attitudes regarding the nature of their job, burnout, and quality of life. The study examined if frontline RNs could be increasingly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic when compared to non-Covid-19 nurses (Bruyneel et al., 2021). The authors also sought to determine if nursing teams working in departments could have differing vulnerability levels to increased burnout. The research also sought to evaluate the burnout level among RNs during and after the pandemic in Belgium. Because of this research premise, the research used the following hypotheses.

Primary Hypotheses

The primary null hypotheses for this research were that nurses in Belgium working in departments in care homes and hospital settings did not experience increased burnout levels before the pandemic and after its outbreak.

Secondary Hypotheses

 

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Participants: This study included nursing teams that represent the diversity of Belgium's nursing workforce.

Measures

The researchers used the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory to evaluate the primary research question, the Maslach Burnout Inventory to ascertain burnout levels, motivation, job satisfaction, and moral distress.

The study used the following research questions

Research Questions

What is the nurse job satisfaction and moral distress level during the Covid-19 pandemic and after its outbreak?

Are there any variations in terms of vulnerability to burnout for care home and hospital frontline nurses when compared to other healthcare staff working to help slow down the spread of Covid-19?

Did burnout and job satisfaction in nursing teams trump over the courage demonstrated in the presence of the Covid-19 pandemic pandemic health crisis in 2020 as compared to other healthcare teams working to help stem further transmission of the virus?

Can the Covid-19 impact on nurse burnout in 2020 persist after the pandemic's end, as established by nurse burnout values for 2021 and 2022?

Contrarily, Lasalvia et al. (200) sought to examine differences in frontline nurses' burnout in hospital and age differences before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the research nurses were aged between 50-60 years 34%, with a mean age of a minimum of 45.91 with 22 years of job experience (Lasalvia et al., 2021). Additionally, 40% of the research participants held a diploma, with 65% of them being at or more than 50 years of age. Job tenure was a determinant variable in all respondents and frontliners. From this research by Bruyneel et al. (2021), it is quite clear that more research is needed to evaluate why some nurses reached the end of their occupational stress without experiencing increased burnout when compared to their counterparts. As a result, there is a need to evaluate which individual and contextual variables protect them from this occupational challenge.

It is critical to note that, as important as the research study is – as it demonstrated a potential for increased RN burnout, thus the compensation aspect in terms of undercompensation may impact their level of may in turn negatively impact their motivation.

On the other hand, job tenure could be employed to upgrade and back control of occupational hea


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