Actually, the hospital floors are more like emotional cauldrons with daily circumstances influencing nurses' feelings and their job performance. In some hospitals, the staffs' emotional flux is reaching fever pitch. Patients, too, are under more stress. They are grappling with the usual mixed bag of stressors that accompany hospitalization, problems with managed care coverage, and loss of control. She compares the irrational and often violent action that causes some motorists to lash out at fellow travelers with patients' treatment of their nurses.
Studies show that patients are verbally abusing nurses more than ever.
The negative interactions can fan RNs' existing emotional fires, perpetuate a domino effect of sour interplay with colleagues, and lead to nurse burnout. Burnout happens when nurses put on a happy face over and over again when inside they're feeling truly frustrated and unhappy. Staffs' frustrations are easy to identify. In Aiken's latest research study, inadequate staffing, lack of control, and higher use of nonlicensed personnel at the bedside are three of the most popular reasons given for nurses' anguish. Nurses feel the pain of not meeting those expectations.