{"id":2432,"date":"2012-08-01T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/?p=2432"},"modified":"2023-09-26T11:29:49","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T15:29:49","slug":"nurse-burnout-and-hais-a-solution-to-a-common-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/nurse-burnout-and-hais-a-solution-to-a-common-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurse Burnout and HAIs: A Solution to a Common Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jeannie
Jeannie P. Cimiotti, DNSc, RN<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Author – Jeannie P. Cimiotti, DNSc, RN
\nExecutive Director, NJ Collaborating Center for Nursing;
\nAssociate Professor, Rutgers University College of Nursing<\/p>\n

Job-related burnout has been well-documented among individuals who provide care to others.\u00a0 The etiology of burnout points to chronic stress that results not only from the close interaction with people, but with the organizational climate in which people work.\u00a0 One organizational area that has been extensively identified as a contributing factor to this complex syndrome is workload.<\/p>\n

Historically, nurses provide care under less than desirable circumstances. Often overworked and under appreciated, nurses are the only professionals who are in constant contact with patients, and they deal with life and death issues on a daily basis. It\u2019s not surprising then that our survey<\/a> of nurses in Pennsylvania showed that more than a third reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, a key component of burnout syndrome.\u00a0 We must ask ourselves, what happens when nurses suffer from high emotional exhaustion? It\u2019s simple – they begin to feel like they lack control.\u00a0 Then, they psychologically and cognitively detach from the care environment. The result is less than optimal nursing care.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nurse workload has been linked to patient infections, yet, the mechanism has not been clear.\u00a0 We know that good organizational climate can lead to fewer adverse patient outcomes, despite less than optimal nurse staffing.\u00a0 We also know that improved workload and good organizational climate can reduce job-related burnout.<\/p>\n

We now have promising evidence that links nurse burnout to catheter-associated urinary tract (CAUTI<\/a>) and surgical site infections (SSI<\/a>). In our study<\/a> of Pennsylvania hospitals published in the American Journal of Infection Control<\/em> (AJIC<\/a>), we found that increasing a nurse\u2019s workload by one patient was associated with increases in both CAUTI and SSI. Each 10 percent increase in a hospital\u2019s high-burnout nurses corresponded with nearly one additional CAUTI and two additional SSIs per 1,000 patients annually. We suggest that if nurse burnout rates could be reduced to 10 percent from an average of 30 percent, Pennsylvania hospitals could prevent roughly 4,160 infections annually with an associated savings of $41 million.<\/p>\n

Reducing burnout rates of nurses is a win-win.\u00a0 By reducing nurse workload we can protect our nurses from burnout and we may be protecting patients from infections.<\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Jeannie P. Cimiotti is associate professor in the College of Nursing at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in Newark. She also directs the New Jersey Collaborating Center for Nursing, the nurse workforce center in New Jersey. Her research interests include nurse workforce issues and the quality of patient care. Dr. Cimiotti has presented her research findings internationally and her work appears in a variety of peer-reviewed journals<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author – Jeannie P. Cimiotti, DNSc, RN Executive Director, NJ Collaborating Center for Nursing; Associate Professor, Rutgers University College of Nursing Job-related burnout has been well-documented among individuals who provide care to others.\u00a0 The etiology of burnout points to chronic stress that results not only from the close interaction with people, but with the organizational<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":2431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2432"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7873,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions\/7873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/safehealthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}