Running head: Nurses’ Burnout during a Pandemic 1

Nurses’ Burnout during a Pandemic

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Nurses’ Burnout during a Pandemic

Clinical question

My group was assigned the topic 'nurses' burnout during a pandemic.' The SARS-COV 2

pandemic has led to increased workload among nurses in hospitals due to a surge in the number

of patients requiring health intervention. The surge can be attributed to the high infectiousness of

the Covid-19 virus. Increased workload with inadequate staffing usually leads to burnout since

the few nurses available are forced to work extra shifts/hours to care for many patients.

Significance of the problem

Patient neglect has been highly associated with nurse burnouts and fatigue among nurses

(Carayon & Gurses, 2017). During pandemics, there has always been a struggle to keep a

desirable nurse-to-patient ratio to ensure quality and adequate patient care. A safe nurse to

patient ratio will also help eliminate medication errors, lack of documentation of nursing

procedures, burnouts among nurses, and even subsequent poor quality of care. The topic dwells

on the burnout among nurses during a pandemic, especially Coronavirus, and strives to identify

the various risk factors contributing to burnout. The presence of increased burnout among nurses

during a pandemic like Covid-19 has been identified. According to a study involving 16 peer-

reviewed articles and 18 935 nurses, there are increased cases of burnouts during a pandemic;

34.1 % of nurses experience emotional exhaustion, 12.6% of nurses have depersonalization,

while 15.2% experience impaired self-satisfaction during and after shifts (Galanis et al., 2021).

Furthermore, burnouts have been associated with increased risk of exacerbations of mental

illnesses among frontline workers, including nurses dealing with Covid-19 patients; depression

was reported by 45.9% of the nurses, Anxiety (48.2%), insomnia (37%), and distress (28.8%)

(Ali et al., 2021).

Purpose of the paper

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the various risk factors associated with

increased nurses' burnout during a pandemic like Coronavirus. Identifying these risk factors will

aid in early planning, thus averting burnouts in the occurrence of pandemics. This will assist in

eliminating various negative effects associated with burnouts to both the patients and the nurses.

The PICOT question is: What are the associated risk factors for nurses working during the

Covid-19 pandemic in relation to increased burnout?

Levels of Evidence.

The question is etiological. PICOT framework is used to develop questions in solving

research problems. PICOT is a mnemonic for population/patient, intervention/indicator,

comparison/control, outcome, and time. PICOT usually assists in formulating research questions

and in searching the literature for review. The patient/population problem concerns nurses

working in a healthcare setting during a pandemic (Covid-19), while the intervention under

consideration is identifying the risk factors, thereby preventing future occurrence. The

comparison part is not applicable in this question, although the control will be the management

of burnouts in nurses during the Coronavirus pandemic. A decline in the cases of nurses' burnout

during the pandemic is the anticipated outcome. Time duration is the period of existence of the

Covid-19 pandemic that is ongoing.

In answering this kind of question, the best type of evidence will be a qualitative study.

Qualitative research integrates the usage of language and ideas in establishing basic knowledge.

When researching the risk factors of nurses' burnout during a pandemic, qualitative research
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Nurses’ Burnout during a Pandemic

assists in understanding the knowledge, experiences, and practices among nurses during the

SARS-COV 2 pandemic. Qualitative research tends to answer the what, how, or why regarding

the risk factors to burnout through open-ended interviews, focused group discussions, or

observation. The identified type of evidence will allow us to effectively answer the research

question, hence coming up with the various solutions for the identified risk factors (Houser,

2018).

Search Strategy

During the search process for the information concerning the topic of discussion, terms

used included "burnout in nurses," "burnouts in hospital staffs during pandemics," and "risk

factors associated with nurses' burnouts." These terms formed the search key that was used in the

Chamberlain Universities library database. Refinement of the search results was done before

results submission by narrowing the search results to those published in the last five years.

Choosing articles, which had duly been peer, reviewed also formed part of the refinement

procedure. The search strategy resulted in two relevant articles. The first paper, titled Nurses'

burnout and associated risk factors during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and

meta-analysis, is a significant article that analyzes the risk factors associated with burnout during

the Coronavirus period. The research was conducted through a systemic review and meta-

analysis of existing literature on nurses' burnout. Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria. The

study noted that the main risk factors linked to increased burnouts included inadequate social

support, younger age, supposed Coronavirus threat, longer shifts in the working areas, and a poor

working environment with inadequate resources. The study concluded that nurses suffer from

increased burnout levels during the coronavirus pandemic, and several factors like

sociodemographic, social, and work-related factors influence this burnout (Galanis et al., 2021).
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Nurses’ Burnout during a Pandemic

The second article was titled, the influence of burnout on patient safety: Systematic Review and

Meta-analysis. Twenty-one studies were analyzed, most of which dealt with the link between an

existing burnout and deteriorating patient safety. The study noted that high levels of burnout

were associated with external factors like extra workloads, which are usually witnessed during

pandemics like Covid-19, and impaired interpersonal relationships in workstations, thereby

negatively influencing the moral support that an individual may benefit from when overwhelmed

during shifts/work period. The study concluded that increased burnouts usually impair patient

safety. Thus, mechanisms and strategies should consistently be implemented to avoid burnouts

during pandemics, improving patient safety (Garcia et al., 2019).

Conclusion

The identified two articles support my research question exceptionally. During the Covid-19

pandemic, frontline workers like nurses did not back out from the hospitals. Instead, they

continued providing care to patients while putting themselves at extreme risk. They experienced

amplified workload while being at risk of getting the infection thus, potentiating the risk of

burnout. Furthermore, burnout affects the nurses negatively; it also impairs healthcare delivery in

that it hampers patient safety and the quality of care.

References

Ali, S. K., Shah, J., & Talib, Z. (2021). COVID-19 and mental well-being of nurses in a tertiary

facility in Kenya. PLoS ONE, 16(7 July). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254074

Carayon, P., & Gurses, A. P. (2017). Nursing Workload and Patient Safety — A Human Factors

Engineering Perspective Chapter 30 . Nursing Workload and Patient Safety — A Human

Factors Engineering Perspective. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook

for Nurses, 2(1), 2203–2216.

Galanis, P., Vraka, I., Fragkou, D., Bilali, A., & Kaitelidou, D. (2021). Nurses’ burnout and

associated risk factors during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-

analysis. In Journal of Advanced Nursing (Vol. 77, Issue 8, pp. 3286–3302).

https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14839

Garcia, C. D. L., De Abreu, L. C., Ramos, J. L. S., De Castro, C. F. D., Smiderle, F. R. N., Dos

Santos, J. A., & Bezerra, I. M. P. (2019). Influence of burnout on patient safety: systematic

review and meta-analysis. In Medicina (Lithuania) (Vol. 55, Issue 9).

https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina55090553

Houser, J. (2018). Nursing research: Reading, using, and creating evidence, 4th ed. Jones &
Bartlett Learning.