This is a guest article contributed by American Nurses Association California member, Calah Hardin, BSN, PHN, RN.
Stress is a prevalent issue in the nursing workforce, and despite the many interventions that have been created and implemented to address it, it is still here in a big way and when the stress becomes overwhelming, our profession suffers. To add to this, it is widely known that nursing stress also negatively impacts the quality of patient care and outcomes.
The fact that nursing stress is still one of the most common self-reported reasons as to why nurses leave the profession is a major concern and was the inspiration for this quantitative, cross-sectional pilot study.
I will go into more details in a little bit, but first, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Calah Hardin, I live in Los Angeles, and I am a DNP ACNP-AG student about to implement my capstone research project! Hello!
Okay, back to the official stuff. After months of researching what we have done so far to mitigate this issue, I realized that the source of nursing stress is beyond what we have been addressing up until now. Our previous interventions have been aimed at treating the symptoms rather than the root cause, and so it makes sense that nursing stress is still a problem. It is well known that the healthcare system is restrictive, antiquated, and contains many inefficiencies.
Simply put: Our hands were understandably tied, and we did the best we could given the circumstances.