Problem Statement
Over the years of nursing practice, many professionals tend to feel exhausted and emotionally drained from the workload, interaction with patients, and providing support to others. According to Galanis et al. (2021), emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of accomplishment were only some of the contributing factors to the nurses’ burnout. While the majority of factors depend on the proper leadership and establishment of a work-life balance, the sense of accomplishment is associated directly with the nurses’ education and professional competence. The notion of evidence-based practice (EBP) is one of the most successful means of enhancing the professional competence of nurses (Melnyk et al., 2018). Hence, the primary problem for the present project is the influence of EBP training and education on nursing burnout.
Setting
The primary clinical setting for addressing the aforementioned is the nursing staff of the general hospital. According to Rusca (2019), general hospitals are characterized by a high level of burnout syndrome among nurses, so there is a need for meaningful intervention. Moreover, a general hospital implies that nurses need to have expertise in various fields, as the setting does not deal with specific medical conditions, presenting a beneficial opportunity for a learning environment.
Problem Description
The evidence-based practice stands for the nurses’ ability to master the skills of research and implement relevant findings in practice in order to improve patient outcomes. Indeed, EBP practices have already been proven to create a more innovative and integrative environment for health care (Cleary-Holdforth et al., 2021). However, whereas the attention is mostly paid to the benefits for the patient population, other aspects of motivation for nurses to embrace EBP remain vague.
While it is clear that nurses should prioritize patient needs in their practice, hospital management often overlooks the impact nursing burnout has on the quality of such care. Essentially, when nurses are overwhelmed with day-to-day operations, little attention is paid to education and organizational readiness for EBP. As a result, while many nurses understand the significance of EBP, its implementation is not as rapid and efficient as expected (Yoo et al., 2019). Such a discrepancy points to an explicit need to present the value of the EBP from a new angle by demonstrating how the implementation of the EBP affects the sense of accomplishment among nurses.
Effect of the Problem
Currently, there is evidence that remotely demonstrates that the implementation of the EBP reduces the level of burnout among nurses. For instance, a study by Rodríguez-Nogueira et al. (2021) reveals that the adoption of EBP practices is positively correlated with the nurses’ self of accomplishments. The latter, in its turn, is likely to reduce the prevalence of burnout syndrome, as self-actualization helps nurses find the inner motivation to optimize health care. Another study conducted by Weheida et al. (2018) takes a contrary approach to the problem, identifying that the prevalence of burnout is one of the major barriers to the implementation of EBP guidelines in the work setting. Hence, considering the aforementioned evidence, it may be concluded that both burnout syndrome and lack of EBP implementation have a detrimental impact on nursing and patient care delivery.
Significance to Nursing Practice
For many years, practitioners and scholars have been willing to define the tangible solutions to both the gradual implementation of the EBP and the reduction of the burnout rate among nurses. Creating an initiative that would tackle both these components is, by all means, a meaningful intervention in the nursing practice. It may be noted from personal experience that, in many cases, nurses are not willing to embrace EBP practices because they are extremely self-conscious due to a high level of fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Currently, nurses are encouraged to advocate for EBP implementation according to the national guidelines, whereas the pace of learning and approaches to performance are unique for every nurse (Doherty & Hunter, 2020). Thus, there is a need to look for alternative ways of EBP promotion that would not increase the self-consciousness rate among professionals.
Proposed Solution
Considering the evidence above, the proposed solution to the problem would be the intervention to increase nurses’ willingness to implement EBP through training and education to see if their sense of accomplishment decreases the burnout rate. The intervention would address nursing staff and nursing leaders, whose primary task is to present an educational framework for EBP organizational awareness and implementation. After the training, the nurses are expected to have more expertise and inner motivation to implement EBP and improve their well-being and perception of self.
References
Cleary‐Holdforth, J., O’Mathúna, D., & Fineout‐Overholt, E. (2021). Evidence‐based practice beliefs, implementation, and organizational culture and readiness for EBP among nurses, midwives, educators, and students in the Republic of Ireland. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 18(6), 379-388. Web.
Doherty, D. P., & Hunter Revell, S. M. (2020). Developing nurse leaders: Toward a theory of authentic leadership empowerment. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 416-424).
Galanis, P., Vraka, I., Fragkou, D., Bilali, A., & Kaitelidou, D. (2021). Nurses’ burnout and associated risk factors during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 77(8), 3286-3302. Web.
Melnyk, B. M., Gallagher‐Ford, L., Zellefrow, C., Tucker, S., Thomas, B., Sinnott, L. T., & Tan, A. (2018). The first US study on nurses’ evidence‐based practice competencies indicates major deficits that threaten healthcare quality, safety, and patient outcomes. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 15(1), 16-25. Web.
Rodríguez-Nogueira, Ó., Leirós-Rodríguez, R., Pinto-Carral, A., Álvarez-Álvarez, M., Morera-Balaguer, J., & Moreno-Poyato, A. R. (2021). Examining the association between evidence-based practice and burnout among Spanish physical therapists: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 11(8), 805. Web.
Rusca, K. (2019). Prevalence of burnout syndrome among nurses in general hospitals in provincial East Java: Cross-sectional study. Enfermeria Clinica, 29, 362-366. Web.
Weheida, S. M., Al-Metyazidy, H. A., & Abou Ramadan, A. H. Relationship between nurses’ burnout and implemented evidence-based guidelines in intensive care units. IOSR Journal of Nursing and Health Science, 7(2), 27-35. Web.
Yoo, J. Y., Kim, J. H., Kim, J. S., Kim, H. L., & Ki, J. S. (2019). Clinical nurses’ beliefs, knowledge, organizational readiness and level of implementation of evidence-based practice: The first step to creating an evidence-based practice culture. PloS One, 14(12). Web.