Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

M5 – H. Assessment Assignment Description Stress and Nursing Practice • Describe the case that defined you as a nurse In a Mental Health Setting. What happened? If not happened to you, create one. • How were you involved? • How does this case still affect you and your practice? • What steps have you taken to overcome the stress of this event? (Remember to protect patient privacy). Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

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• Explain the importance of debriefings. • Are they used in your workplace? • If a debriefing would happen? • Who would be involved? • What would be discussed? • Who would lead the debriefing, • Where would it take place? • Are debriefings possible at your workplace? • Would they help nurses deal with stress? • Assignment Expectations: • Length: 1250 to 1750 words • Structure: Include a title page and reference page in APA format. These do not count towards the minimum word count for this assignment. Your essay must include an introduction and a conclusion. • References: Use appropriate APA style in-text citations and references for all resources utilized to answer the questions.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay. A minimum of two (2) scholarly sources are required for this assignment. Overview As nurses, we all have a case that defined you as a nurse. This is usually a case with a bad or potentially bad outcome. How has this case affected you and your practice? How do you deal with stress? Stress affects all body systems and can make you quite ill. As nurses, we want to take care of our patients, but do we actually take care of ourselves? In this Module, you will be exploring stress and how it affects your job, and life.

While some types of stressful situations are specific to nurses working in a particular hospital unit, all nurses are generally subject to stress arising from their work environment’s psychological, physical, and social aspects. High-stress levels often result from adversely affect patient care, turnover, and staff burnout. In many careers, the working environment is a significant recourse of occupational stress. The importance of managing this stress is observed, especially by Occupational health and safety, due to its effect on productivity and the arousal of occupational accidents and diseases. As the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic accelerated, healthcare systems would become overwhelmed. The result of this was increased psychological pressure on nurses designated to care for patients with the disease.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

During the pandemic, the schedule for ICU nurses had us working seven straight nights. The night before the fateful day, I took a long nap to ensure optimum functioning to ensure one can get through their twelve-hour shift. As the number of infected people rose, so did the pressure within the unit. When intubating a patient, one runs the risk of getting droplets on them and subsequently getting infected (Huang et al., 2020). While this procedure is second nature to most nurses in the ICU, the toll taken by the long shift and the number of patients increases this risk. We hand not lost a patient yet, however, and this was uplifting. This was until one patient; a colleague, was offered the maximum amount of support that could be given. It was unclear whether the patient had been infected at work, and this was alarming. The patient’s oxygen levels continued to drop, and it was clear that they would succumb to the symptoms. Covid19 patients are not allowed to see their families. Therefore, it is the role of ICU staff to assist the patient in saying their final words to their family through digital means such as an iPad.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

I was part of the ICU’s interprofessional team, offering care and support to this particular patient. Roles assigned to nurses in the ICU at this time included the following;

• The evaluation and monitoring of the progress of patients.
• The identification of subtle and sudden changes in the medical conditions of patients.
• Delivering updates to doctors, patients, and family members.
• Starting treatments and monitoring doses.
• Responding to emergency and, when necessary alerting the relevant doctor.
• Caring for the needs of ICU patients during their recovery.
• Maintaining patient records and ensuring they are regularly updated in the hospital’s electrical medical records system.
• Creating effective care plans for ICU patients.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

My tipping point came as a result of losing my first patient to this condition, who was the colleague in question. This was after facilitating communication between the patient and their family. This event affected my practice in several ways. First, it was then that I understood how much risk nurses and other members of the health profession are at from this disease. Over six hundred nurses have currently succumbed to the disease, most of whom got infected while providing care to patients. This realization has continued to affect my practice as COVID19 infection rates continue to surge.Secondly, while it is common to experience death as a nurse, it was different to experience a colleague’s death, especially one who was under my care. While assisting family members in saying their final words, I ran different scenarios in my head about what could have been done differently to ensure a better outcome for the patient in question.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

In health care, timely debriefing is essential because if its capacity to enhance team members’ ability to deal with events such as the one above and challenge the actions taken during the shift, especially if serious injury or death occurred.  Debriefing aims to reduce the probability of psychological harm befalling team members by discussing the event, the facts of the case, correcting misconceptions, and asking fair and valid observations that may be useful for subsequent cases. For debriefing endeavors to be successful, they needed to possess four core characteristics. The first is confidentiality. The only reason to share the findings of a debriefing would be when other members of the organization stand to benefit. Secondly, debriefings should be non-threatening. This is because, when hostility is introduced to such a situation, it will result in a breakdown in communication if not a complete shutdown.  Successful debriefings also need to be structured. It is for this reason that a professional in the field should be consulted to facilitate. Finally, as stated before, debriefing sessions need to be timely. The sessions should be within 24 to 72 hours after the incident (Roh et al., 2016).

To mitigate the negative effects of this occurrence, my workplace would arrange for a series of debriefings involving ICU staff. Sessions were to be conducted within 24 hours of this incident. This is because the more the time between the incident and the critical incident stress debriefing elapses, the less effective the endeavor (Maloney, 2012). The debriefings would be carried out in teams. Every medical team would have a psychologist leading the debriefing. Several benefits exist to having a psychologist facilitate a debriefing session instead of a peer-led intervention (Roh et al., 2016). In a study by Roh et al. (2016), instructor-led debriefing was seen to result in better subsequent performance, higher debriefing scores, and higher levels of satisfaction with simulation experience compared to peer-led groups. Therefore, the investigators concluded that instructor-led debriefing was a more effective method for inducing satisfaction, improving the performance of nurses, and generally providing better debriefing following traumatizing and stressful incidences among nurses.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

Early psychological assessments would be carried out with interventions being conducted as well. Nurses would then be guided in developing a reasonable understanding of COVID19 to prevent excessive anxiety and panic. The medical staff attending to COVID19 patients was then advised to gain familiarity with this new working environment and the recommended safety procedures as soon as possible to avoid unpreparedness situations.Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

During debriefing sessions, teams were encouraged to express their emotions regarding the event by talking, singing, drawing, and exercising. Some methods that are easy to learn were encouraged for relief of anxiety and tension, such as taking deep breaths. Teams were advised to talk with their colleagues who had experienced the stressful occurrence then understand and heal as a group.  Regular meetings were organized to facilitate the unearthing of the sources of nurses’ psychological issues and develop solutions for each. Most nurses in the facility had little experience with infectious diseases and were worried about facing the same fate as the deceased colleague.

The psychologist facilitating each session would ensure a series of issues were brought up and discussed by the team. The first issue was whether or not the team was satisfied with their ability to care for the patient in question. The answer to this question would advise the psychologist on the potential for the stressful occurrence to affect team members’ practice. Secondly, the facilitator would have the team members discuss what happened and especially what they could have done differently. It was also important to talk about what each team member had learned. Finally, the psychologist asked team members to discuss how the situation can be improved to ensure there is no repeat of the occurrence. An open forum was also part of the sessions. This allowed team members to table their thoughts and feelings that they thought were not adequately addresses in the session. These steps are as advised by Zhi et al. (2020).Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.

From the above therapeutic experience, it was evident that debriefing was important in the healthcare setting. This is because the practice fosters timely and relevant discussion of a traumatic or stressful event in a non-judgemental and non-threatening manner. The practice is especially useful for nurses that have experienced stressful or traumatic experiences in their practice but are reluctant or apathetic to discuss them. Suffice it to say, however, that debriefing may not work for everyone. Several colleagues would continue to experience post-traumatic stress following the event, especially with the increasing pressure and workload following the spread of this disease. The correct course of action was, therefore for the nurses to be taken off the schedule and undergo further psychological intervention (Mealer et al., 2007).Stress and Nursing Practice Essay.