For individuals in the healthcare industry, nurse retention is impacted by added responsibilities, shifts and physician scheduling errors. Pressures like these have contributed to the increasing number of nurse burnout cases. If your healthcare organization doesn't address this issue, it will continue encountering employee turnover, particularly for nurses.
Burnout is a medically acknowledged state of physical and emotional exhaustion that prolonged stress causes. While anyone can experience burnout at any time, it's particularly common in the healthcare field. Nurse burnout can lead to errors and as nurses' morale drops and their job discontent grows, it's your patients that suffer. One of the biggest reasons for nurse burnout is emergency medicine scheduling issues. But there are other causes of nurse shortage or nurse burnout, which you can improve. Here are three ways:
Three Ways to Improve Nurse Retention and Burnout
1. Balancing discharges and admissions. Along with patient acuity, the staffing of nurses should take account for the patient traffic being admitted and discharged from your facility. When you have numerous admissions and discharges in one day, it can affect your nurses' workload and add to their stress, resulting in burnout. The key to reducing burnout here is to balance your staffing based on the needs of patients, instead of the number.
2. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Nurses, like all professionals, require a decent work-life balance. You should encourage your nurses to engage in things they like to do when they're off work. Perhaps try some relaxation techniques like meditation or enjoy hobbies which can help alleviate their work-related stress. An essential way of helping your nurses maintain a healthy work-life balance is by setting the example. If your nurses are seeing you continually stressed and not allowing for some downtime in your schedule, why would they consider doing that for themselves? If possible, scatter your small errands throughout the week so you can relax on your weekends. Avoid activities and tasks that sap your energy and time unnecessarily so you feel more confident and less stressed at work.
3. Implementing shift scheduling software. Some healthcare workers acknowledge the direct effect staffing levels have on their staff and their patients' satisfaction and care. To ensure proper staffing numbers and streamline the scheduling process, many healthcare practices are using nurse scheduling software. Implementing a scheduling program designed for hospitals that operate 24/7 and schedule for shifts is important. Scheduling software that allows you to make schedules for multiple units and offers multiple schedule visibility across a whole organization will help prevent improperly scheduling and double booking nurses who work in multiple locations and departments. When you can find the best nurse scheduling software that will best meet your staffing demands, it will help to improve nurse retention and patient satisfaction and reduce nurse burnout. Most importantly, it can help you improve the quality of services you provide to your patients.
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