Healthcare is constantly evolving to meet the needs of patients, healthcare facilities, and their communities. Policies and procedures are continuously updated to meet these demands set by business models to be profitable to continue to provide care for the community. Standardized policies are often efficient and cost-effective routine care that can interfere with nurses’ ability to provide ethical, individualized care (Kelly & Porr, 2018). Nurses must recognize their actions’ potential moral repercussions, resolve problems, and address patient needs (ANA, 2015).
Specific Competing Needs that Interfere with Nurse Burnout
Procedures are updated as needed, which could mean weekly, monthly, or even daily. Depending on nurse staffing, physician staffing and other ancillary departments may be short-staffed, and needs can change. In my outpatient oncology center, when another ancillary department is short staffed it affects the infusion nurses. If one or more operators call out, it is up to the infusion nurse to take off messages and return the patient’s calls. If the lab is short, it is up to the infusion nurses to draw the patients’ labs before their treatment. Suppose the infusion scheduler is out; the infusion nurses send an email to ensure that patients have their next appointment. If the pharmacy technician is out, it is the responsibility of the infusion nurse to fill in and admix the chemotherapy. If a physician is out, the infusion nurses often evaluate and assess the patients, and treatment is administered accordingly. These changes are made daily based on the needs of the office. These changes meet the demands of the office and the patient, adding a lot to the already full role of the infusion nurse. These changes increase the risk of burnout for the infusion nurse. Emotional intelligence is an essential aspect of self-awareness. Awareness of one’s motional intelligence can help enhance relationships and increase self-awareness (Walden, 2009). While a nurse must possess an ethical understanding in caring for their patient, nurses must owe the same duties to themselves as well as others, including the responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity, maintain competence, and continue personal and professional growth (ANA, 2015). While adding more tasks to the already full load of the infusion nurse could create a further ethical dilemma. Nurses must be able to recognize when enough is enough, and they need to speak up for their safety and the patient (Kelly & Porr, 2018).
How Policy Addresses these Competing Needs
Given the complexity of healthcare environments, nurses must recognize ethical issues as they arise. Strong leadership is essential in promoting a healthy environment. Promoting a healthy environment for the nurses helps to promote a healthy environment for the patients. Recognizing that nurses are already performing every task, they are capable of and not adding more jobs to their daily routine will help to reduce ethical risks. Ethical awareness must be evaluated in everyday nursing practice (Milliken, 2018). Most people think of ethical awareness of doing what is morally right and good for the patient. Still, the American Nurses Association also points out that nurses have an ethical commitment to themselves. As professionals who assess, intervene, evaluate, protect, promote, advocate, educate, and conduct research for the health and safety of others and society, nurses must take the same care for their health and safety (ANA, 2015).
Conclusion
Nurses should not take unnecessary risks to jeopardize their health or safety. Burnout and compassion fatigue affect nurses’ ability to care for their patients. Therefore, nurses must be aware of their emotional intelligence and speak up for their ethical well-being to provide better patient care.
References:
American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive
Statements. Silver Spring, MD: Author, Retrieved from
https://www.nursingworld.org/coe-view-onlyLinks to an external site.
Kelly, P., & Porr, C. (2018). Ethical nursing care versus cost containment:
Considerations to enhance RN practice. OJJN. Online Journal of Issues in
Nursing, 23(1), Manuscript 6. Doi:10.39
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