Burnout, Waiting Room and Slow-Wave Sleep! When nurses don’t feel they have the time to take an extra moment to listen, to make eye contact, to touch a hand with compassion, it hurts at a deep level. Both nurse and patient satisfaction suffer. You can prevent burnout by knowing what is truly important to you in the human connection with your patients. Then, creating and taking the time to be present, to notice those moments when you made that connection. Nurses, while technically competent, also have strong values for human life, caring, support, love, comfort, listening, connecting and more. Acting on these values is what makes nurses come alive. Take time to notice the moments you are connecting and living your value for meeting human need. 20 year old female with right lower quadrant abdominal pain arrives at 0852. She thinks she has a urinary tract infection. She is afebrile, denies nausea or vomiting, has normal BM's. Her other vital signs are normal and she rates her pain 5/10. MD sees the patient one hour after she is put in the room, the urine results have been on the chart for 30 minutes showing blood and leukocytes in the urine. The pregnancy test is negative. Ultimately the patient is discharged home after spending most of a twelve-hour shift in the ER. Diagnosis? Pyelonephritis, which is what she thought she had when she arrived. Multiply this by 31 rooms and add in a waiting room full of angry, sick people who have been waiting for hours for a room - stir into that a couple traumas, a few mental health patients as well as angry patients and their family members and you can see why we get burned out. People who have stressful jobs, especially those in the caring professions, are more susceptible to the condition. For instance, lawyers, teachers, counsellors, paramedics and taxi drivers are more likely to suffer. Also, those who are particularly committed to their jobs have a higher likelihood of burnout. Reasons for a person to submit to burnout are varied: lack of control, unclear job expectations, dysfunctional workplace dynamics, poor job fit or extremes of activity. A Swedish study whose conclusions were published in the New Scientist in Nov. 2004 found that disrupted sleep was at the root of burnout rather than stress per se. The research team at Karolinska Institute in Sweden tested 35 patients who had been off work for a minimum of three months. They found that there was a 40 percent reduction in slow-wave sleep compared with healthy people, with patients surviving on four or five hours sleep a night. Didn't find it? Enhances your Search Results with Glossary A-Z. Find specific keywords that point to the latest related news: Stress. People who have stressful jobs! RSS CrossRef Health Search and and share
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