Stressed-Out Nurses Commit More Mistakes

Nikki Attkisson | Last Updated : May 5, 2021

Work pressure represents a danger to the well-being of laborers. We all know working at a medical clinic is stressful and traumatic. Patients come into the clinic under pressure and fearing the most terrible happening. For nurses, who work at the edge line for the patient, this can result in uneasiness at work.

Stressed-Out Nurses Commit More Mistakes

New research says nurses with mental stress are more likely to commit mistakes, as compared to nurses with healthy mind and workplace. Mood swings, sleep disturbances, headache, and disturbed relationships with family and friends are examples of stress-related problems that are quick to develop and are commonly seen in these studies.

Stressed-Out Nurses Commit More Mistakes

For the research, scientists studied almost 800 individuals from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. The results were printed on 1st May in the American Journal of Critical Care. 61% of them revealed disappointing well-being, and 51% announced below average emotional well-being. 

About 40 percent of the attendants showed signs of depression. The individuals who had worse health were somewhere in the range of 31 percent and 62 percent bound to make clinical blunders. Meanwhile, those Nurses whose employer supported them and was concerned about their wellbeing have better mental health and give better performances.

Let’s consider an example; a nurse works nine hours in the operating room. An emergency arises, and she gets back to the clinic to help with a long surgery and then gets back to the medical clinic the following morning for an additional eight hours in the operating room.

Imagine how exhausting it would be for her to work under such circumstances. Dr Melnyk, who was the dean of the College of Nursing in Ohio, stated that problems that cause poor health among nurses need to be solved. Nurses work long hours in such a stressful environment and they need to lessen stress for their health enhancement because only then they will be able to take the best care of the patients.

Nurses are responsible for themselves and their patients to be well-treated to provide the best quality care possible. Imagine a tired nurse misinterpreting a doctor’s orders, which results in devastating results in the patients’ health.

Researchers also mentioned that this study took place pre-covid phase, so now there are chances of higher levels of anxiety, stress, and depression among the nurses. The main reason for conducting this study was to inform the hospital management and health system that when the working place has such policies which benefit worker’s health, they provide better support to their nurse staff, they will yield better results for the hospital as well as patients, and for all this to happen, nurses should be at better physical and mental wellbeing

Although there are many causes of stress in workplaces, the employer or the head of hospital staff management should ensure that there isn’t too much workload on workers’ capabilities, he should try and communicate with the workers, and they face any problem, the management should try to provide support in every way possible. Exhaustion may never be completely helped in a medical care industry that should give 24 hours of consistent consideration consistently; however, it tends to be better overseen and manageable.


Nikki Attkisson

With over 15 years as a practicing journalist, Nikki Attkisson found herself at Powdersville Post now after working at several other publications. She is an award-winning journalist with an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a journalist covering technology, innovation, environmental issues, politics, health etc. Nikki Attkisson has also worked on product development, content strategy, and editorial management for numerous media companies. She began her career at local news stations and worked as a reporter in national newspapers.

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