“I feel broken”: Chronicling burnout, mental health, and the limits of individual resilience in nursing

Abstract

Healthcare systems and health professionals are facing a litany of stressors that have been compounded by the pandemic, and consequently, this has further perpetuated suboptimal mental health and burnout in nursing. The purpose of this paper is to report select findings from a larger, national study exploring gendered experiences of mental health, leave of absence (LOA), and return to work from the perspectives of nurses and key stakeholders. Given the breadth of the data, this paper will focus exclusively on the qualitative results from 53 frontline Canadian nurses who were purposively recruited for their workplace insight. This paper focuses on the substantive theme of “Breaking Point,” in which nurses articulated a multiplicity of stress points at the individual, organizational, and societal levels that amplified burnout and accelerated mental health LOA from the workplace. These findings exemplify the complexities that underlie nurses' mental health and burnout and highlight the urgent need for multipronged individual, organizational, and structural interventions. Robust and timely interventions are needed to restore the health of the nursing profession and sustain its future.

Nurses’ perspectives on workplace environment needs associated to resilience: a qualitative descriptive study

“…Issues such as immediate patient care complexity, administrative mandates, the need to constantly improve professional skills, and dealing with occupational hazards and potential errors in high-stress settings are numerous (1). Such intrinsic challenges, while integral to the nursing profession, can negatively impact their psychological state, leading to outcomes such as emotional fatigue, eroded self-esteem, heightened stress, and the looming threat of burnout (2). Such repercussions contribute to the burgeoning issue of nurse attrition, further accentuating the global nursing shortage dilemma, potentially compromising the quality of patient care and obstructing the broader advancement of the nursing field (3).…”