Mental Health for Nurses: Facility Guide
Nursing is an incredibly rewarding profession, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. The long shifts, fast pace, and significant physical and emotional demands of the job can contribute to high levels of moral distress and caregiver burnout. It’s essential that healthcare leaders understand the importance of prioritizing wellness and mental health for nurses to improve the safety, resilience, and job performance of their clinical teams.
In this article, we provide a brief overview on nurse mental health, review startling statistics of caregiver burnout, and outline strategies for administrators looking to boost nursing wellness, satisfaction, and engagement at their facility.
What Is the Importance of Mental Health in Nursing?
Healthcare leaders juggle many responsibilities, such as training employees, managing a budget, and ensuring regulatory compliance. With so many competing demands, some administrators may question the importance of addressing employee mental health.
For nurses and other healthcare employees, emotional stress can affect every aspect of their work day, including:
- The quality of care they’re able to provide.
- How they communicate with other clinicians, patients, and their families.
- Their motivation and drive to support the mission of their employer.
This direct relationship between nurse wellness and care quality can be seen in nurse sensitive indicator data, HCAHPS surveys, and CMS facility ratings. These metrics often affect an organization’s staff retention rates, patient loyalty, and financial stability.
Measuring Nurses’ Mental Health: Statistics for Facilities
Increasingly complex clinical demands often leave nurses feeling pressured to provide a level of care they realistically aren’t able to give. When short staffing is added into the mix, the job can seem impossible, which also contributes to feelings of hopelessness. Unfortunately, our nursing trend report reveals that these nurse mental health issues aren’t disappearing anytime soon. Here are some key takeaways from our survey of over 3,000 nursing professionals:
- 75% of nurses report feeling burned out on a regular basis.
- 28% of nurses say they feel unsafe at work.
- Nearly 40% of nursing professionals don’t feel supported by healthcare leadership.
- 45% of nurses plan to leave the profession in the coming year.
Major reports from other industry-leading healthcare companies have similar findings, stating that:
- 44% of nurses state that their mental health and wellbeing is “bad” or “very bad.”
- 22% of healthcare workers have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
- Nurses are 18% more likely to die by suicide than the general population.
Factors Affecting the Mental Health of Healthcare Workers
After analyzing statistics like these, most healthcare leaders acknowledge the significant health crisis at hand. However, without studying additional factors, it will be difficult to support employees in a way that is lasting and meaningful. Before you begin developing solutions, consider how these aspects of the nursing profession can impact mental health for nurses:
| Aspects of the Nursing Profession | Impact on Nurses’ Mental Health |
|---|---|
| Staffing | Due to industry-wide staffing challenges, healthcare providers are consistently asked to cover additional shifts, leaving them feeling overworked and understaffed. |
| Patient Ratios | Adding increased demand to the staffing challenges means that nursing professionals face heavier patient assignments across all nursing specialties. This can limit the amount of meaningful interaction with patients and can cause some nursing professionals to believe that they aren’t providing the quality of care that their patients need. |
| Exposure to
Human Suffering |
This is an inherent part of the profession, but without proper coping mechanisms and support, daily exposure to disease, death, and violence can take its toll. After suffering prolonged periods of unmanaged stress, healthcare staff often find it challenging to provide compassionate care. |
| Work-Life Balance | Healthcare workers are often required to work long hours, rotate between night and day shift schedules, and miss out on important family events which can leave them feeling less connected to their social support network. |
| Mental Health Stigma | Many nurses show up to work with a “grin and bear it” mentality — this martyrdom mindset has persisted for decades and contributes to poor mental health for nurses. |
Supporting the Health and Well-Being of Nurses: 3 Strategies
Despite the staggering statistics, there are glimmers of hope for the future of nursing wellness. Amid the challenges, some indicators suggest that many nursing professionals remain optimistic about the profession and continue to find purpose and fulfillment in providing high-quality patient care.
Facility leaders looking to alleviate nursing mental health challenges can start by addressing staffing shortages, promoting a healthy work-life balance, and removing the stigma surrounding mental healthcare. Here are three ideas to get your team started.
1. Develop a Nursing Float Pool
Improving mental health for nurses starts with optimizing your healthcare staffing tactics. One way to do this is by developing a nursing float pool. Our nursing trends report shows that nursing professionals care more about receiving additional staffing support than earning a higher salary. Hiring nurses who are capable of practicing in a variety of settings can give you the staffing flexibility you need.
Building a robust nurse float pool allows your team to take mental health days off without fear of letting colleagues or patients down. Float pool nurses can also make it easier for staff members to drop down to part-time employment status by covering the gaps.
This can help full-time staff achieve the balance they need without forcing them to leave their job completely. While staffing a float pool might seem like a costly solution, ensuring safe patient ratios can prevent high nurse turnover — saving your organization thousands of dollars in annual recruitment and onboarding costs.
2. Build a Benefits Package That Supports Nursing Wellness
Incorporating wellness perks into your staff benefits package can give your team the extra assistance and support they need. Showing that you care about your employees’ work-life balance is also a great way to build staff loyalty, improve nurse retention, and boost job satisfaction. Here are some ideas for wellness benefits to offer:
- Ample vacation, sick, and mental health days off
- Access to digital mental health resources for nurses
- Gym and fitness class discounts
- Employee-sponsored counseling services
- Free legal support to help staff understand their rights to paid leave (FMLA, domestic violence leave, etc.)
3. Provide a Healthy Work Environment
A healthy work environment promotes staff empowerment, ensures safety, and optimizes job satisfaction. Take action to address violence against nurses and ensure your staff get protected breaks away from the bedside to eat and rest during their shift. These are just a few efforts that can build trust and unity between your clinical and leadership teams, helping staff feel valued and supported.
Find Additional Ways to Support Your Clinical Team
Providing supportive programs and resources is essential to optimizing mental health for nurses. Developing creative ideas to address your team’s challenges can be tough. Need some help? Our free newsletter can keep you up-to-date on evidence-based strategies and tips for improving the caregiver experience and boosting patient satisfaction.