During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical facilities faced many problems: they affected protective equipment, medicines, and equipment. One serious problem was the shortage of medical personnel – nurses who worked on the front lines and provided care and monitored vital signs. Hospitals found that the lack of nurses led to rapid burnout and a complete inability to fulfill their obligations. One way or another, many nurses had to work overtime, with unpleasant consequences. At the heart of nurses’ burnout due to understaffing is the principle of competing needs, forcing them to disregard their psycho-emotional state to save patients with COVID-19.
The principle of competing needs is that organizations are forced to choose the path of least evil. It means that nurses’ emotional well-being is sacrificed to save more people. Studies indicate that more than half of nursing staff have burnout syndrome after working long hours in a hospital during a pandemic. For example, Salviato, Vasconcelos & de Oliveira (2021) report that emotional exhaustion averaged 56.52% among nursing technicians, with an overall depersonalization rate of over 65% in the study groups. These data suggest that the nursing shortage is forcing the hospital to use current employees more of their time, which is detrimental to their health (Korownyk et al., 2017). Similar data were found in Clinton et al.’ study (2022), in which the burnout rate in the study group was 50%. The work used the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI), which found that more than half of the employees believe they give much more than they receive in return. It suggests that states have prioritized national healthcare needs over the health of workers. Healthcare should create strategies to prevent burnout among nurses and address their needs and those of patients.
References
Clinton, M., Bou-Karroum, K., Doumit, M. A., Richa, N., & Alameddine, M. (2022). Determining levels of nurse burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and Lebanon’s political and financial collapse. BMC Nursing, 21(11).
Korownyk, C., McCormack, J., Kolber, M. R., Garrison, S., & Allan, G. M. (2017). Competing demands and opportunities in primary care. Canadian family physician/Medecin de famille canadien, 63(9), 664-668.
Salviato, L. S., Vasconcelos, F., & de Oliveira, P. (2021). Burnout Syndrome in health professionals in a Covid-19 pandemic scenario: analysis of a university hospital. Revista Científica Multidisciplinar Núcleo do Conhecimento, 8(6), 27-44.