Care Giver Role Strain and Nurse Burnout

Serole et al. (2021) found that dimensions of burnout were characterized by those surveyed as overinvestment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization; they also found that stress at work was highly predictive of burnout among nurses. Their study consisted of a self-reported survey questionnaire among 1774 workers in the health care industry at a university hospital. The findings of their study support the argument among other researchers that burnout is factor affected by stress in the workplace. Zhou et al. (2020), for instance, conducted a systematic review of trainees in the health care industry showing that stress and burnout were intricately linked in cases of health care trainees that burn out too soon. In their study, Zhou et al. (2020) argue that organizational interventions should be conducted to limit the risk of workplace stress so as to lower the incidence of burnout among new hires.

Bagheri et al. (2019) showed that stress-coping exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy interventions can help reduce nurse burnout. Their study consisted of a semi-experimental method with a sample of 60 nurses using a pre-test and post-test design. Nurses were assigned to a control and intervention group randomly, and the results indicated that the intervention group saw less burnout than the control group. Thus, Bagheri et al. (2019) provide support for the argument that nurses should have counseling services available to them so as to be able to cope with on the job stress and the other factors that contribute to burnout.

Care giver role strain is related to burnout in the sense that it appears to arise from apprehension about taking care of the care receiver or seeing the care receivers health decline (Vechia et al., 2019). Role strain occurs when a role player cannot meet the demands of the roleand for care givers this is a problem because it affects those who are on the receiving end of care. For nurses with burnout, role strain occurs as it does for any other care giver: it prevents the care provider from providing quality care to the patient (Schlak et al., 2021). Norful et al. (2018) argue that in some situations, co-management of care environments can alleviate care strain. However, not every environment is suited to the model proposed by Norful et al. (2018).

Moreover, burnout can affect the organization and lead to higher rates of turnover, which is costly for any health care organization as it means more capital and time must be spent on finding new hires, training and onboarding them, and so on (Kelly et al., 2021). Thus, it is in the best interest of any health care organization to find ways to alleviate or address the problem of burnout and role strain among care providers (Norful et al., 2018). The only problem is how to do that effectively.

That is where the intervention study of Baghieri et al. (2019) can...

…Therefore, one must remember that correlation does not mean causation. However, the literature indicates that interventions should be considered as important in this issue. Identifying the right intervention will likely be an issue that must be addressed on a facility by facility basis, as some differences will be found, some models might work better than others depending on the organization and staff, and some might have a more supportive culture than others.

The main take away from the literature on this issue is that burnout and role strain are real issues that care givers and nurses facebut there are ways of coping with these problems and of helping care givers and nurses overcome them (Baghieri et al., 2019; Norful et al., 2018; Schlak et al., 2021). Whether the intervention can be as simple as teaching nurses and care givers to implement stress coping strategies or requires more hands-on cognitive behavioral therapy, or whether support must be institutional and organizational is another matter that cannot be easily answered. The literature on the best approach for addressing the issue of burnout is wide and the systematic reviews discussed here show only that stress is a leading factor in burnout and role strain (Zhou et al., 2020). The factors that are associated with this stress can include over-work, job dissatisfaction, exhaustion, work or family-related pressure, or any other extenuating circumstances. If not addressed role strain and burnout can negatively impact both the patient and…