Response posts: include at least 2 scholarly sources of evidence, cited within the body of your discussion responses & at the end of your posting, at least 2 references
Work-life balance is a major stressor for health care providers. A major concern is caregiver fatigue, also known as compassion fatigue amongst healthcare workers. The quadruple aim is set to help balance the lives of health care employees, during such times as these with the COVID pandemic, stress has been paramount, and keeping bedside nurses has been challenging for many institutions. The goal was set for nurses, by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to be bachelor certified by 2020, as stated by Gerardi, et. al (2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online). This has also caused a bit of stress for many nurses to complete their education requirements. My institution offers tuition reimbursement for employees that work full-time and part-time at a decreased amount dependent on hours worked. This has helped many nurses to achieve their goals of reaching BSN, yet the work-life balance aspect of the quadruple aim still seems a bit off in the distance.
The health system that I work for offers a lot of support for self-care practices for our employees and has a health and wellness center that offers exercise classes and yoga and mindfulness classes to support the staff. There are also resilience classes offered throughout the course of the pandemic for anyone to join on a Teams meeting video conference. The education department is constantly offering classes for improvement and there is a holistic committee that is available for nurses and staff members to utilize if they need extra assistance with patients or with self-care. The team offers aromatherapy sniffers with lavender for calming, an anti-nausea blend for patients, and a variety of others to help calm moods, and the onset of anxiety. Specifically, throughout the pandemic, more people were asked to work remotely if appropriate. Our department has continued to keep remote days as it has shown better work-life balance for many of our team members. This has been in support of compassion fatigue and to improve the work-life balance of many employees across our system. Unfortunately, there has been a large loss of employees due to the ability of some companies to continue to work remotely and this we have seen as a negative change in our department. As noted by Jacobs, et al., in 2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online, employee well-being is very important to assist in working with resilience and helping healthcare professionals the resources needed to help balance work-life needs. As mentioned, financial resources, mental health, benefits that are available to assist employees in managing their lives better, and all these programs are set in place in my institution, there is a financial company that is available to see employees face to face to sit down and review financial wellness and there is a company partnered with the health system for employees to use mental health services as needed. The idea is to provide staff with resources and make available face-to-face training as well as community resources and support from the employee’s benefits. As a nurse leader, it is important to know what is available to be able to assist other team members (Broome & Marshall, 2021).
Compassion fatigue can result in nursing burnout and when issues are not managed properly and the stress can build up and cause negative effects (Rivers, et al., 2011). Resilience and managing self-care are very important for nurses to maintain skills in coping to deal with major stressors related to caregiving. As a nurse leader, knowing which programs are available to the staff help to balance the well-being of the staff members; furthermore, the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) is a survey that can be used to evaluate compassion satisfaction, burnout, and trauma compassion fatigue scales individually (Rivers, et al., 2011). I am proud to say that my institution is aware of these challenging times and offers support to the staff, it is a matter of whether the staff chooses to participate in the classes and if managers are supportive of these measures to help their staff members to become more resilient. I know my manager is always plugging the different resiliency classes and making us aware of when the financial planner is available on our calendars and informing us of new programs whenever they are available and when appropriate. It is also important for nurse leaders to participate in such programs to be able to bring back their knowledge and to share it with fellow staff members.
References:
Auerbach, D. I., Staiger, D. O. & Buerhaus, P. I. (2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online). Growing ranks of advanced practice clinicians- Implications for the physician workforce. New England Journal of Medicine, 378(25), 2358-2360.
Broome, M & Marshall, E. S. (2021). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (3rd ed.). Springer.
Gerardi, T., Farmer, P, & Hoffman, B. (2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online). Moving closer to the 2020 BSN-prepared workforce goal. American Journal of Nursing, 118(2), 43-45.
Jacobs, B., McGovern, J., Heinmiller, J. & Drenkard, K. (2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online). Engaging employees in well-being: Moving from the Triple Aim to the Quadruple Aim. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 42(3), 231-245. Doi: 10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000303
Rivers, R., Pesata, V., Beasley, M., & Dietrich, M. (2011). Transformational leadership: Creating a prosperity-planning coaching mode
