RN, BSN, CEN, CDCES
Loosely translated, “Veni, Vidi, Vici” means, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Attributed to Julius Caesar as a wartime victory comment, it now adequately reflects the continuing efforts of healthcare providers worldwide.
While we tackled insurmountable challenges (patient overload, supply shortages, and staffing vacancies, to name but a few) over the past two years, the long shifts, lack of resources, and mounting traumatic experiences have led to significant rates of anxiety, depression, compassion fatigue, and burnout.
It is now time to save ourselves.
The truth is that modern medicine is often stressful, uncomfortable, and frustrating.
Controversial end-of-life decisions, excessive workloads, and workplace conflict all-cause moral distress.
The purpose of this article is to identify warning signs of caregiver distress, compassion fatigue, and burnout.
Moral distress – the discomfort, angst, and frustration related to situations in which we think we know the “right thing” to do, but cannot due to the situation – is endemic to our current healthcare arena.
The ongoing issues with lack of supplies from PPE and ventilators to patient volume overloads have left many struggling with not being able to do what needs to be done.
Research has shown that moral distress may eventually lead to burnout and an increase in nurses’ intentions to leave their jobs, due to the stress and psychological impact.
Nurses, administrators, and educators must therefore be able to recognize moral distress and intervene as appropriate.
While they cannot necessarily change the trajectory of the pandemic-related patient volume, they can assure safe work environments, a hands-on management team, appropriate staffing patterns, and mental health initiatives to enable staff to carry out their assigned duties.
Compassion fatigue is occurring as well in the healthcare arena, involving deep physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion.
Left untreated, nursing burnout will emerge gradually as the work-related demands chip away at the core of well-meaning individuals.
Compassion fatigue tends to include anger, depression, sleep disturbances, and irritability.
It is a well-known occupational hazard, defined as deep physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.
While self-care methods (proper nutrition, adequate rest/sleep, routine daily exercise) can help offset compassion fatigue to a degree, additional activities such as mindful meditation and writing in a journal have proven equally beneficial.
Most importantly, the practice of critical debriefing after a traumatic event needs to be a normal, acceptable part of the workplace landscape. Healthcare providers are not invincible and need time (and support) to process such events, as they are not normal, everyday occurrences and must be acknowledged as such.
In doing so, we help each other effectively cope and continue to move forth.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines burnout as, “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
Following, the WHO addresses the three dimensions of burnout:
It may result from unhealthy work environments, poor communication, patient workloads or conflicts with organizational policies and practices.
One of the major signs and symptoms is exhaustion, often to the point of apathy.
Left unrecognized and worse, untreated, burnout can result in workforce employees suffering from depression (to the point of suicide), workplace apathy and negative patient outcomes.
Imagine being “cared for” by people that simply “no longer care.” A frightening thought indeed!
Every workplace sector is at risk for exposure to stressors that increase the chance of compassion fatigue, and burnout.
Sadly, healthcare workers have had significant workplace stressors, daily, for almost 2 years, resulting in a compromised workforce.
Without significant changes in the current workplace, we risk a massive nurse exodus, which will most certainly cripple our already staffing shortage issues.
While doing research for this article, I came across this eye-opening insight into Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic saint and Nobel laureate known for her missionary work in India during the 1930s.
According to the American Institute of Stress, Mother Teresa recognized the effects of care giving and the need for self-care.
Apparently, she wrote in her plan to her superiors that it was mandatory for her nuns to take an entire year off from their duties every 4-5 years to allow them to heal from the effects of their care-giving work.
One can only imagine what she would say about today’s frontline caregivers.
We came, we saw, we conquered…. now it is time to rest, recover and rejoice in our efforts and all we did (and continue to) accomplish in the face of such extraordinary challenges.
It is indeed the only thing that will ensure our survivability for the future of healthcare.
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