The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of a personalized self-designed care plan on the burnout risk in registered nurses. The specific aim is to compare changes in self-reported compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress scores using the Professional Quality of Life Questionnaire, in a group of registered nurses.
Background/significance:
Nurses face extraordinary stress in the current healthcare environment. Nurses provide compassionate care to patients who experience illnesses and events that are often sudden, disfiguring, and life threatening. Compassion fatigue (CF) is the combination of secondary traumatic stress and burnout (BO) experienced by nurses who may experience secondary effects when caring for patients. Prolonged exposure to stress without effective mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) mechanisms could lead to a host of physical and emotional problems. This effects the workplace, and is linked to absenteeism, higher attrition, medical errors and decreased productivity related to fatigue, irritability and poor communication.
Method:
In a Quasi-experimental research design, the registered nurses (RNs) were recruited to participate in a demographic questionnaire and the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) surveys in an eight week self-care program. The ProQOL is a 30-item tool that uses a likert-type responses that range from 0 (never) to 5 (very often). It has three subscales: burnout (BO), compassion satisfaction (CS) and secondary traumatic stress. Recruitment was at the workplace and voluntary, participants agreed to weekly entries into an on-line software website survey monkey. Scores were compared before and after participation in the program. At the end of the study, the participants were asked their opinion regarding the helpfulness of the study.
Results:
There were 120 RNs recruited in this study and 86 participants entered pre-intervention ProQOL data and 103 entered post-intervention data. Forty individuals were able to be matched with both pre and post data based on self-identified identification and passwords and compared. It showed a lower statistically significant BO score after participating in the program (P=0.033). There was marginally significant increase in the CS score after participating in the program (P=0.54). There was no significant change in secondary traumatic stress scores. There were 92 responses to the qualitative open ended question and 61 participants believed that this eight-week self-care program was helpful but 10 did not and 21 were not sure
Conclusions:
There was a statistically significant change in the post scores in the reduction of BO without significant changes in CF and secondary stress.