Remedies For Improving The Wellbeing Of Healthcare Professionals
Sick and ailing receive care from the Healthline workers. Healthline workers include doctors, nurses, assistants, technicians, and medical waste handlers. There are many studies about the well-being of the patients, but little attention has been paid to the wellbeing of healthcare providers. Due to issues in the healthcare practices, the Physical And Mental Condition of healthcare professionals is deteriorating day by day. Lack of staff leads to overtime and increased workload for the remaining staff. This causes anxiety, depression and other abnormality to the healthcare experts. Psychological abnormalities lead to mental disorders and another disastrous outcome. This condition of the doctors and nurses not only affects their standard wellbeing but also causes different medical errors. The study aims to identify the causes of issues in the healthcare practice and analyse them to find remedies for this Remedies For Improving The Wellbeing Of Healthcare Professionals.
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There are many issues regarding the mental and physical deterioration of Healthline workers. These issues burn out the professionals and affect the treatment of patients. Due to stress and depression, the doctor or nurse cannot concentrate on their duties, resulting in medical errors. Patient dissatisfaction becomes a cause of workplace violence. Here the significant issues are being described to prevent any disaster.
Mandatory overtime is one of the most consistent challenges in healthcare practices. Many costly medical mistakes result from the stress and exhaustion caused by this overtime. Due to this drained condition of the healthcare providers, it is very tough to give attention to the family or self-care. This also leads to harmful consequences. As per Angioha et al., (2020), there was relationship between working overtime and the workers’ physical and mental wellbeing. Participants reported that working overtime created stress. Extra workload also led to stress and health hazards among the participants. According to Kikuchi et al., (2020), there was a linear relationship between the length of overtime and psychosomatic stress responses. As per Rivard et al., (2020), increased workload led to stress, burnout, turn over in the workforce. This resulted in a decreased number of experts in high-quality emergency care. According to Prasad & Raveendran, (2019), overtime or overload brought problems in the life of nursing employees. It was proved that working women were swamped down to balance work and family life. As per James et al., (2020), there were sleep disruptions and a decline in cognitive ability for the nurses worked overtime.
Inadequate staffing: One of the causes of mandatory overtime is insufficient staffing. This healthcare provider shortage has become an ongoing challenge (Chima, 2020). To meet the inadequacy, the number of inefficient people increases day by day, leading to dangerous outcomes. Medical errors have become very common in today’s world. Due to shortage, the healthcare providers barely find time to interact with individual patients or the patient’s families. This shortage increases the mortality rate of the patient. Due to miscommunication or less communication time, the patient does not get enough time to share his feelings with the doctor or nurse. It creates dissatisfaction from the patient’s corner. The healthcare providers also feel drained mentally and emotionally as they cannot provide adequate care to the patient. When healthcare professionals are forced to work, patients die, become injured, or are told to return home without proper education. Education is essential to a patient about the strategies for taking care of their illness. Being unaware of the treatment strategies, they return to the hospital immediately after the discharge in a worse condition than the previous one Remedies For Improving The Wellbeing Of Healthcare Professionals.
Mandatory Overtime
Workplace hazards: Workplace hazards mean chances of being affected by cold, flu germs, bacteria, and viruses and transmitted to other patients or families. In the era of covid 19, it becomes natural that these frontline workers are affected by this virus, and their families are affected by this. It is natural for a sick healthcare provider to take leave and get enough rest. However, due to a shortage of staff, it has become impossible. Mentally depressed healthcare providers become unable to concentrate on his /her duties, and the result becomes disastrous. According to Que et al., (2020), healthcare workers suffered from psychological problems like anxiety, insomnia, depression, and psychological issues during covid. Healthcare workers reported more severe mental health conditions than nonmedical workers. Nurses and doctors who were more affected by mental problems had high workloads. They had to keep them separated from family to prevent the transmission of covid. This became a source of stress. As per Cabarkapa et al., (2020), health workers were prone to mental health problems, trauma, and disorders related to stress, anxiety and depression. As per Preti et al., (2020), healthcare workers were affected by post-traumatic stress, depression, insomnia, anxiety, stress, and general psychiatric symptoms.
Technology: Though the healthcare profession benefits from technological advancement, it has some side effects. Healthcare professionals have to update themselves to learn new skills as technology advancement is at a very high pace. According to Smith, (2019), the healthcare providers did not get enough time to skill themselves due to the heavy workload. For this, they could not progress as per need. This led to depression, lack of self-confidence, and irritability.
Workplace violence: Disturbed mental peace results from excessive workload and responsibility. Healthcare professionals find psychological trauma and stress as they become victims of threats, harassment, and abuse. Sometimes verbal abuse leads to physical violence. The most common causes of violence are patients, intruders, co-workers, and visitors. According to Mento et al., (2020), various negative impacts on the workers’ health like stress, anger, insecurity, and burnout were seen by workplace violence. As per the view of Kumari et al., (2020), the physical and psychological wellbeing of the healthcare workers were affected, and their job performance was severely hampered. Increased burnout and turnover of the intention affected the patient’s quality of care. There were several causes of physical injury due to violence. These acts led the doctors to abstain from high-risk surgeries to safeguard themselves from unfavourable outcomes. These episodes demotivated doctors from pursuing their occupations. According to Davey et al., (2020), 90% of healthcare providers experienced workplace violence. Maximum reported physical abuse. The most common factors of such violence were long wait times, tremendous patient outcomes, and low health literacy. As per the view of Hacer & Ali, (2020), workplace violence led to burnout of the healthcare professionals, decreasing the rate of success and declining interest in the business. According to Emam et al., (2018), Healthline workers had experienced verbal, racial, ethnic or physical violence.
It is the government’s responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of healthcare professionals. The recommendations are:
Inadequate Staffing
Develop and implement programs for the safety and occupational health of the workers by appointing officers with auditory for safety and occupational health, developing codes of practice, standards, and guidelines on safety and occupational health.
To protect healthcare professionals from workplace violence, relevant policies should be implemented. A culture of zero tolerance should be promoted.
Mental and psychological deterioration of the Healthline workers is one of the most concerning the outcome of the issues in healthcare practices. To improve the wellbeing of them, policies should be established where the duration of deployment should be fairly distributed. Reasonable working hours, break for rest also be included there. Inadequate staff problems also are resolved. Work-related risks must be covered under the insurance. Education regarding work-life Balance, risk assessment, and mitigation should be provided to Healthline workers for the mental and physical wellbeing of the healthcare professionals. There must be adequate resources to protect healthcare professionals from injuries or exposures to radiation and chemicals.
The goals of these implementations are to protect the healthcare professionals from injuries, work-related burnout and stress, work-related violence, hazards related to the workplace and more.
Protection of healthcare professionals from workplace hazards is also essential to ensure their safety and wellbeing. Personal protective equipment should be available enough in proper fit and quality. Environment services like disinfection, water, ventilation, sanitation and hygiene must be adequate in all healthcare facilities.
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Conclusion
From this review, it is concluded that the present situation of the healthcare professionals is deplorable due to mistreatment towards them. Injustice may be from the end of the healthcare system, like lack of adequate staff and mandatory overtime. Workplace hazards are the probability of the Healthline workers being affected by infectious agents like bacteria and viruses. Healthline workers have to treat the patients irrespective of their conditions. So, it is very natural to be affected by the infectious agent. This all leads to psychological trauma and deterioration of the health of the Healthline workers. The other causative agents are lack of technological knowledge and workplace violence. These all affect the Healthline workers and their care for the patients. In a word, the whole healthcare system will be damaged by these issues. So, it is high time to pay attention to the wellbeing of the healthcare professionals and motivate them.
Reference list
Angioha, P. U., Omang, T. A., Ishie, E. U., & Iji, M. E. (2020). Employee Stressors and Wellbeing of Healthcare Workers in Government owned Hospitals in Calabar, Nigeria. Journal of Public Administration, 2(4), 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Angioha-Pius/publication/348554262_Employee_Stressors_and_Wellbeing_of_Healthcare_Workers_in_Government_owned_Hospitals_in_Calabar_Nigeria/links/6003b5cf92851c13fe17f624/Employee-Stressors-and-Wellbeing-of-Healthcare-Workers-in-Government-owned-Hospitals-in-Calabar-Nigeria.pdf
Cabarkapa, S., Nadjidai, S. E., Murgier, J., & Ng, C. H. (2020). The psychological impact of COVID-19 and other viral epidemics on frontline healthcare workers and ways to address it: A rapid systematic review. Brain, behavior, & immunity-health, 8, 100144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbih.2020.100144
Chima, S. C. (2020). Doctor and healthcare workers strike: are they ethical or morally justifiable: another view. Current Opinion in Anesthesiology, 33(2), 203-210. doi: 10.1097/ACO.0000000000000831
Davey, K., Ravishankar, V., Mehta, N., Ahluwalia, T., Blanchard, J., Smith, J., & Douglass, K. (2020). A qualitative study of workplace violence among healthcare providers in emergency departments in India. International journal of emergency medicine, 13(1), 1-9. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12245-020-00290-0
Emam, G. H., Alimohammadi, H., Sadrabad, A. Z., & Hatamabadi, H. (2018). Workplace violence against residents in emergency department and reasons for not reporting them; a cross sectional study. Emergency, 6(1). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5827053/
Hacer, T. Y., & Ali, A. (2020). Burnout in physicians who are exposed to workplace violence. Journal of forensic and legal medicine, 69, 101874. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jflm.2019.101874
James, L., James, S. M., Wilson, M., Brown, N., Dotson, E. J., Edwards, C. D., & Butterfield, P. (2020). Sleep health and predicted cognitive effectiveness of nurses working 12-hour shifts: An observational study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 112, 103667. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2020.103667 Remedies For Improving The Wellbeing Of Healthcare Professionals