U.S. health care workers continue to experience high levels of stress and exhaustion, especially among nurses on the front lines to deliver health care. Fatigue is a professional phenomenon that results from chronic stress in the workplace and is characterized by emotional exhaustion, negative emotions, or mental distance from the function of the individual, and the low feeling of achievement at work.
The nurses working on the front lines to connect health care are often in high pressure environments and perform works consisting of complex tasks, heavy work burdens and difficult timelines. These common challenges are the factors that can lead to high levels of stress and fatigue between nurses and can lead to low job satisfaction, negative feelings towards the individual profession, and the intention of leaving the job or profession.
During the past eight years, Deborah Goldz Goldberg – who has a PhD in health services, health and health sciences allied – has spent most of its time in researching and writing about causes and solutions to address fatigue by doctors, nurses and other health care specialists.
She is a participating professor in the Ministry of Health and Politics at the Faculty of Public Health at George Mason University and faculty members at the Evidence based on the Department of Evidence in the Department of Psychology.
Its experience in adopting and implementing new technologies and innovative care processes. During her career, she worked in various roles in the health care industry, including the management of the front lines in acute care hospitals, administrative consultations and as a university professor in health services research.
Health care news I sat with her to discuss how to improve information technology systems coordination and communication for nurses, how nurses work can provide flexibility for labor schedules and improve workforce management, and how IT technology can support the luxury of the workplace.
Q: How can information technology systems improve coordination and communication for nurses? How can this help reduce fatigue?
A. Developments in IT systems have produced digital tools that can help nurses in the activities of care and communication between nurses and patients and between nurses and other health care workers. These technologies include remote medical trees, safe messaging tools, cooperative tasks management tools and virtual meeting applications.
There are many medical platforms on the available distance that provide support for nurses to provide care for patients from remoteness, which can increase communication with difficult to reach patients and provide flexibility in work arrangements. Safe messages are another information technology tool that can help nurses in communication.
An example of safe messages is the PaBox e -mail suite, which is an email compatible with HIPAA designed to safely connect healthy health information. Spruce Health and Zoom Healthcare are examples of systems that provide safe contacts for the patient and virtual meetings that can be used to communicate with patients, families and care teams.
There are also cooperative tools for task management, some are compatible with HipPa, which can help nurses and nurses managers create task and final dates, or time schedules for the project or GANTT plans, file sharing/documents, actual time or chat. Some of these tools may provide integration with calendars, email or electronic health records.
These information technology systems have the ability to increase the efficiency of work performed by nurses and improve care for patients, and thus contribute to increasing functional satisfaction feelings.
Successful adoption and implementation of new information technology systems require a clear understanding of nurses’ visions regarding useful features and how these systems are smoothly integrating into their routine practice.
in One qualitative studyThe nurses shared their views on the benefits of integrating innovative information technology in the workplace. Exchange of nurses views of positive views on the benefits of information technology systems that can provide plans to care for patients, improve communication, reduce work burden and improve patient satisfaction.
For example, nurses saw the ability to use IT systems that support artificial intelligence to assess the initial patient and use communication systems to exchange audio/visible data with patients to improve communication between patients and nurses. The nurses also reported concerns about the implementation and use of information technology, which include privacy problems, patient approval, software updates and technical difficulties, the adequacy of digital literacy by nurses and patients, and challenges with the management of work burden.
This is similar to what the nurses and other health care workers mentioned In my research At George Mason University, as well as emphasizing the need for the IT system to obtain an easy -to -use interface and interview interface with other systems.
IT systems can help nurses in the front lines by improving care format and enhancing communication, thus providing the ability to simplify work tasks and improve patient results. The design and implementation of new systems must include nurses and other health care workers whose work will be affected by new technology.
The implementation of new or modified information technology systems must take into account the requirements for the work burden for nurses, the required technical skills and training. Future research must assess the impact of new information technology systems on the burden of nurses’ work, tension and well -being.
Q: You say that to schedule the nurse’s work that can provide flexibility for work schedules and improve the management of the workforce. Please explain and talk about how this can help in the pathogenic tired crisis.
A. The work schedules and the inability to take sufficient rest periods during the transformations require factors that contribute to the fatigue between the nurses. In our research At George Mason University, we found that the number of hours that operate a week is linked to exhaustion between nurses and other health care specialists. The relationship between the number of working hours and exhaustion was found in many studies, through health care professions.
There are many information technology systems designed to support the nurses schedule that can help manage employees, transformations, additional work, compliance with hospitals and outpatient settings. These systems can be used by nurses’ managers to place a maximum of hours that work daily or a week, and set the time for breaks during transformations that allow psychological separation from work, enhance more flexibility and choose work schedules for nurses.
Examples of health care scheduling systems include Kronos, Qagenda and Shiftwizard workforce scheduling.
Q: Information technology can support the luxury of the workplace. How can its role in these areas help reduce fatigue?
A. There is increased evidence that supports the use of specific and luxury information technology tools to reduce tension and exhaustion between nurses and other healthcare professionals. For example, A random experience controlled For the program to reduce the exhaustion designed with the help of artificial intelligence that it runs through the mobile phone application, the nurses’ healing space has found a significant decrease in the degrees of pathogens compared to control groups.
in Another random control experience The Mayo Clinic researchers were conducted, and they found a great improvement in the emotional stress and well -being among the participants using smartphones based. At George Masson University, we are currently conducting research that holds the effectiveness of the stress line, and the application of behavioral health online, in building psychological flexibility and reducing stress for nurses and other health care specialists.
Other researchers assess the use of virtual reality technology to reduce stress and anxiety among health care workers. One example From VR use to support behavior health for health workers on the front lines, the quiet cinematic simulation of a quiet natural environment, which led to a significant decrease in stress among the participants.
These information technology tools can help face some of the challenges related to the work facing nurses and nurses. However, a comprehensive solution is needed to address individual and regulatory factors and the system level that contributes to fatigue. We need organizational commitment and local/national policies that support the health, safety and welfare of the nurses.
The comprehensive approach to tackling exhaustion will include the recognition of leadership and support, safety measures in the workplace that include activities to reduce violence and harassment in the workplace, and the participatory leadership approach that includes nurses in decisions that affect their work, and redesign jobs and/or changes in work schedules, programs and services to support mental and luxury health.
Follow Bill Hit coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Seuiki
Email him: [email protected]
Healthcare is Hosz News.
Watch now: How to launch a health care project, according to VA AI president
