Impact of Stress on Nursing Home Staff - Research Paper Example

In-depth interview in qualitative research method on the impact of stress on nursing home staff This is research on the impact of stress on nursing home staff member is because there is a need to find out proper intervention mechanism to mitigate stress at work, so that managers, supervisors would be able to manage it and enhance performance of individual workers. Stress if left untreated could result into severe depression and anxiety, which could trigger other related diseases that would incapacitate nurses working in a stressful environment. Therefore, this research is based on the effects of stress on nursing home staff, as the title suggests, the in-depth qualitative interview is to be conducted to find out how much the nurses are impacted with stress at various work environments. Nurses working at busy nursing homes experiences several stressful situations, in order to deal with this stress effectively, employees and management should ensure there is a proper working environment for nurse employees and try to minimize negative behaviour at work and introduce mechanisms to deal with stress among nurses. To come up with efficient intervention mechanisms that would be easy to follow and render effective management of stress and by understanding the psychological symptoms of stress such as anxiety, irritability, lack concentration, poor judgment, frustration, anger and physical symptoms such as headaches, low back pain, insomnia, and high blood pressure to effectively control and manage stress. To investigate the role of job stressors and how they contribute to nurses stress included role conflict and ambiguity, lack of promotion opportunities and feedback, lack of participation in decision-making, excessive workload, unsatisfactory working conditions and interpersonal relations. Although the current study will evaluate the effect of the stressors on the nursing home staff members, and their impact on the organizational performance of employees that would eventually affect the performance of nurses. This research will enable managers identify the sources of stress first, understanding where the nurses get affected by those conditions and recognizing their impact on nurses performance, these allows managers to understand how to reduce or mitigate against those sources of stress and reduce their impact on nurses performance. In addition, by knowing the sources could be helpful in choosing an intervention method that could best deal with stress. Although it is not possible to control all of life’s events, how to identify the sources of stress may be a complex task, but through right understanding and with good planning, stress and its causes can be avoided and managed productively. Work performance will always depend upon how nurses feel and valued by the nursing homes supervisors who could manage stress effectively, eliminate emotional problems, sustain mental well-being, and encourage nurses to work in the midst of stressful environments. Interventions that are effective are often improperly or only partially implemented when put into practice. To examine the usefulness of this RE-AIM, will evaluate two key research objectives. First, the feasibility of operationalizing the RE-AIM framework using stress management programs for nursing home staffs and secondly to determine how successful the intervention program would be if applied correctly by using the following criterion; effectiveness alone, reach and effectiveness, or the 5 dimensions of the RE-AIM framework. This interview’s main objective is to find out the kind of intervention programs that could be easy to evaluated, feasible in terms of implementation and effectiveness. This paper will also evaluate and recommend any intervention depending upon: reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance make up the RE-AIM framework. The main reason as to why preferred the use of RE-AIM framework is because i it is feasible to operationalize the RE-AIM concepts and provide a richer measure of contextual factors for the intervention program success compared with other evaluation approaches. This RE-AIM concept shows the proportion and representativeness of the nurses at nursing home that would participate in the intervention program. Efficacy or effectiveness is the positive intervention outcome, while adoption refers to the proportion and representativeness of nursing home settings and number of nurses who will adopt the recommended intervention programs. Implementation concerns the extent to which the intervention is implemented as intended and maintenance is the extent to which the intervention is sustained over time in order to reduce impact of stress among nurses, which would be evaluated as follows: Individual Level Impact It is important to evaluate each nurse so as to provide valuable and independent information of stress intervention impact upon nurses. This paper will evaluate the effect of using RE-AIM concepts; reach and efficacy on individual nurses-levels whereas adoption and implementation on nursing home levels. Encase of those nursing homes that have stress interventions programs in place will assess whether those stress interventions have an impact in terms of reach and efficacy at the individual-level. Maintenance of stress free working environment could be both at an individual or organizational-level to effectively manage stress at nursing homes. How they are implemented that is whether they are only adopted, implemented, and maintained at a small number of nursing homes with specific resources that are not available in typical nursing homes. Nursing home Level Impact If only the individual nurse RE-AIM concepts would be used to evaluate the stress intervention programs, and whether it would be assumed that the stress intervention mechanisms have a huge potential for impact working performance. Or how these stress intervention programs of improve working environment at nursing homes and their adoption, implementation and maintenance. In addition, to address issues that could affect systematic stress intervention program adoption, implementation, and maintenance. PHQ-9 Assessment of the impact of stress among nursing home staff PHQ-9 Assessment for stress This in-depth interview questionnaire is an important part of qualitative research that is aimed at providing the best stress intervention program for nursing home staff. I am a master student at ...... researching on the impact of stress among busy nursing home staff, the aim of this paper is to found out what contributes to stress at nursing homes and what appropriate intervention programs could be implemented to reduce stress at work with the sole aim of improving working environment of nurse. Your cooperation and honesty responses will help us unearth the causes of stress and come up with mechanisms to mitigate the impact of stress on work performance among nurses working in a busy nursing home. Questions to ask 1. Have you been bothered by feeling down depressed or hopeless? Yes I have been bothered with feeling down, stressed and hopeless most of the time in the last two weeks. 2. How do you rate yourself on the interest for work and other hobbies you may have enjoyed doing before the last two weeks? Yes, have lost interest going out with friend, reading and watching television 3. Do you enjoy or get enough pleasure out off the work and hobbies you used to enjoy before the last two weeks? Yes, at times I find it difficult in concentrating reading and socializing with friends and watching television If the nurse answer is yes to any two questions above, go ahead and ask more questions to get more clarification prompt as follows. 1. What do you think of having trouble falling, staying asleep or oversleeping? In the last two weeks whenever I go to bed, I find it difficult to fall asleep, most of the time I worry more about my work performance, whether am able to delivery services effectively, what my employer thinks of my work delivery, and bit myself, when i fall asleep final it becomes difficult waking up in the morning and feel tired the whole day. 2. What do you make of your appetite? And weight? In the last two weeks have lost my appetite and about 3kgs in total; Do you think that the loose of sleep, pleasure in things you used to enjoy having an impact on your appetite and weight lose? Not really, I do not think there have any relation with my loss of appetite, but whenever I leave work I feel exhausted and go to bed without eating or eat a fruit before going to bed, and in the morning I wake up ;late as a result I hardly take breakfast. 3. How do you perform at work do you have any difficulties in concentrating? Concentration for the past two weeks as been my major concern, because of fatigue, I hardly concentrate on anything, even on my favourite weekly TV show and reading. The other day my supervisor reprimanded me, of being sloppy of my work and lack of following instructions and taking patients notes during the rounds. 4. Would you rate yourself as a confident nurse if no how does lack of confidence affect yourself esteem? Since, I started having trouble falling asleep, loss of appetite and weight, and fatigue most of the time. Yes my self-esteem and confidence is at its lowest currently, even though have tried masking it with a smile and pretending to be busy, it has always lingered in there, hope will sort it out soon than later as it is affecting my work performance. 5. Have you ever blamed or felt guilty about your situation? Not really, but lack of self-esteem and confidence, has affected me more than I would have imagined, therefore, I do not know where to place these two, though you know whenever you fail to delivery at work you got to have someone or something to blame on, I kind of thing I have a major role to play in the kind of performance have put in for the last two weeks, as my supervisor said it is been wanting. 6. In the past two weeks have you been restless or slowly than usual? Yes, have been feeling restless especially when filling the forms and breaks 7. Have you ever thought that life is not worth living, or you are better off dead? No, what has crossed my mind is, getting a off for a month or so to go home and take a total rest before I resume work. Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems, think the appropriate box which represents the number of days you have experienced them. Results The result from this in-depth qualitative interview indicates that the nurse interviewed score a score of 27 indicating a severe form of stress as shown below. PHQ-9 Assessment interview form 1 Little interest or pleasure in doing things 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 2 Feeling down, depressed or hopeless 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 3 Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 4 Feeling tired or having little energy 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 5 Poor appetite or overeating 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 6 Feeling bad about yourself, or that you are a failure, or have let yourself or your family down 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 7 Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 8 Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite – being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x 9 Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself in some way 0 Several days More than half the days Nearly every day x Read More