How Nurses are affected by Stress in Psychiatric Unit of Somers Ward Research Paper

How Nurses are affected by Stress in Psychiatric Unit of Somers Ward - Research Paper Example The paper tells that nurses are currently facing great challenges and dilemma in their field of practice to date. This is foreseen to affect significantly the delivery of patient’s care and health of the nurses in the future when left unresolved. Nurses are â€Å"short-handed, understaffed, and overworked† and to some extent, burnout. The emotional stress they carry watching their patients die and see grieving families oftentimes add up the physical stress of overstretching themselves to work on double shifts to cater understaffed hospitals. As a result, new nurses are recruited from different parts of the world, and are placed on probationary period. This period can be very stressful also to both nurses, old and new, taking into consideration the culture shock, the expectations, and language barriers that adds up to being stressed from the hospital work. Looking back, severe shortages of nursing staff working at bedside is not a new dilemma in the health care arena sin ce this problem had already started even during the time of Florence Nightingale in the barracks of Scutari amidst the Crimean War. During that time, significant shortages of trained personnel to take care of the dying young men from the battles and diseases were already noted. But despite of the existing problems, nursing profession continued to thrive until this date. However, Milleken, et al cited that the stressful circumstances and repeated challenges that face the nursing staff contribute to organizational problem in the future that may endanger the health care system. The Rationale of Doing this Research: The continuous shortage of nursing staff all over the world has not exempted the facility where I worked in. Somers ward is an 18-bed unit, and is the only acute psychiatric facility in the Bermuda Island. Being the only specialized facility in the island, it is expected that the nursing staff will be outnumbered by the number of patients who are coming for admission. To dat e, the nurse to patient ratio is 1:8, where only one nurse is assigned to take charge to 8 patients per shift. Every day, I’ve experience this event happening in the ward, and as a nurse, I’ve seen how overloaded we are with our respective responsibilities, and sometimes, we are required to extend the number of hours at work because we are short-staffed. I felt the frustrations, anxiousness, and together with my co – workers, we have a cry to put a stop on this scenario. Otherwise, all of us