Health Medical Homework Help

Please reply to this integrating a scholary reference.

As recently as several months ago, I was employed at a free-standing Psychiatric Hospital with over 100 beds where I was employed for 3 years. During that time, I experienced the changing of Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Initially, I did not expect that change to affect me, but I was wrong. Soon after accepting the post, the new CFO started making changes.

There are several buildings on the campus, each housing 2 units of patients. Many of the nurses worked 8 hour shifts as medication nurses while the unit charge nurse worked 12 hours. This allowed staff to work hours that suited their personal lives and provided additional staff during waking hours (medication nurses were not scheduled overnight).

On a morning monthly meeting the new CFO announced that all nursing staff would be switching to 12-hour shifts and the position of medication nurse was being eliminated. This caught the staff off-guard, and hand were raised. One nurse stated that her child was in daycare, and she would not be able to manage the schedule due to the daycare hours. The CFO stated, “Sounds like a you problem.”

Since then, many other changes were put into place without warning or staff support. Less than half of the staff that worked there 3 years ago remain and turn-over of new hires is very high. Some new employees have left during their first shift when they see the patient to staff ratios are not acceptable due to staffing shortages. Many staff who continued working there, experienced occupational stress and burn-out, others left the healthcare field altogether, and one unfortunate supervisor took her own life recently.

According to Garcia-Izquierdo et al (2017) Burnout Syndrome has been an area of concern, especially in the healthcare setting, since the 1980’s. The Covid-19 pandemic has increased demands on healthcare workers, recent studies show a high number of mental health problems among healthcare workers since the epidemic began. Reports show as many as 40% of healthcare workers report acute stress, 30% report anxiety, while others report burnout, depression, and other mental health issues (Serrano-Ripoll, 2021).

Resilience may be the key to help staff tolerate the stress and burn out, we as a community need to find a way to grow resilience in our practice to prevent the exodus of staff from the workplace, workforce, or from contributing to self-harming behavior. There is evidence that staff who report higher levels of resilience have better tolerance to work-place stress and emotional exhaustion (Garcia-Izquierdo et al 2017). Healthcare networks need to foster an atmosphere that encourages the utilization of the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) or other resources to manage their stressors, without stigma. The ability to use a sick day for mental health without repercussion would be beneficial as well. More research is needed to identify the most effective ways to increase resilience, but to Garcia-Izquierdo et al (2017) suggests it be incorporated in nursing school curriculums as a foundation to build on throughout their practice, and help individuals identify their own signs and symptoms of psychological illness.

If I were the CFO, and I needed to make changes, such as the change in hours I wrote about- I would send out a questioner to determine how many of the staff would be negatively affected. I would research the impact it would have on the staffing and provide a question-and-answer session to explain why the changes needed to take place. Early and often is bast practice for information sessions and fact gathering. Involving the staff is the best way to have them get on-board willingly.

Janis

Garcia-Izquierdo, M., Meseguer de Pedro, M., Rio-Risqez, I., & Soler Sanchez, I. (2017). Resilience as a moderator of psychological health in situations of chronic stress (burnout) in a sample of hospital nurses (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.). The Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50(2), 228-236. (WO 2)

Serrano-Ripoll, M. J., Ricci-Cabello, I., Jimenez, R., Zamanillo-Campos, R., Yanez-Juan, A. M., Bennasar-Veny, M., Garcia-Toro, M., Pastor-Moreno, G., Ruiz-Perez, I., Alonso-Coello, P., Llobera, J., & Fiol-deRoque, M. A. (2021). Effect of a mobile-bases intervention on mental health in frontline healthcare workers against COVID-19: Protocols for a randomized controlled trial. JAN Leading Global Research, 77(6), 2898-2907. https://chamberlain.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUCON_INST/f6kb8f/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2498478504