According to a survey conducted earlier this year, more than one-third (34%) of nurses say it’s very likely that they will leave their roles by the end of 2022, with 44% using burnout and a high-stress environment as the reason for their desire to leave.
In addition, around 400 staff leave the NHS every week due to the effects of stress, including burnout and PTSD, in the workplace.
Burnout can cause people to make mistakes such as duplications, incorrect information, and late data entry, causing incorrect decision-making.
Being one of the most passionate and necessary industries, it is important that healthcare workers, including nurses, doctors, and clinicians, are given the right amount of support.
Bearing this in mind, Hannah Wilkinson, head of People & Culture at Radar Healthcare, shares five ways burnout across the healthcare workforce can be alleviated.
Implement easy-to-use systems
The best systems are the ones that are effective yet easy to use, and healthcare tech companies should work alongside healthcare workers to design and ensure their systems are meeting these standards.
Administration is one of the key tasks of a healthcare worker, and keeping on top of this can be extremely stressful and time-consuming- particularly in a fast-paced and hectic healthcare environment.
These issues can stem from various factors, including work overload, a lack of supportive technology, poor communication between healthcare professionals, and other inefficiencies. This can negatively impact an organisation’s reputation, the quality of care provided, and regulatory inspection ratings.
Therefore, embracing easy-to-use, paperless methods can improve organisation, boost work ethics and morals, encourage communication, and reduce the number of hours completing admin. Also, having all documentation in one place will make unexpected inspections less stressful for staff.
Having communication touchpoints
While many remote employees are at a higher risk of feeling isolated than their in-office counterparts, certain shifts and hours could make healthcare workers feel alone and isolated.
Their feeling of isolation can lead to them overworking themselves, leading to burnout and employee competition because they might feel the need to compete with their in-office colleagues that they never see to compensate for being absent from the office.
To help reduce burnout here, tech organisations can help keep employees engaged by utilising AI technology to create frequent communication touchpoints, such as instant messaging (IM), employee portals, virtual assistants, and web-based meetings.
Web conferencing platforms can also drastically improve employee productivity and efficiency by answering questions, scheduling meetings, booking travel, and giving tasks to complete- and maintaining communication with other employees.
Ensuring data is automatically integrated
To reduce the stress of keeping on top of important patient health data and records, ensuring that health data is automatically integrated into platforms will help provide a more robust image of a patient’s care journey.
It will help workers avoid mistakes and reduce the manual workload of inputting data, which could cause a worker to do overtime, causing burnout and stress.
Implementing an auditing module
Radar Healthcare’s auditing module allows users to audit their processes on the go, ensuring that the most accurate and updated information is being considered when assessing your teams.
The workforce compliance module can also ensure that the staff’s well–being is a focus too. Keeping tabs on employees’ training, accreditations and qualifications mean that everyone is working to the expected level, and no one needs to stress about missed deadlines or renewing memberships.
Identifying when something goes right
Often, those who work too hard and suffer from burnout are the ones who aren’t praised enough for their work.
While having peace of mind knowing that your staff are trained and equipped to do their job is essential, it is also equally important that your staff know they are also doing a good job too.
Therefore, it would be helpful to log compliments like some organisations log complaints to ensure that your teams can see that their hard work is paying off.
Employers can install an incident management tool for logging compliments to help increase staff positivity and reduce burnout.
Increasing staff positivity
Alongside the above methods of alleviating healthcare worker burnout, it’s also important for those working within the sector to feel understood and supported by those working in similar settings and dealing with the same kinds of pressure.
Whether sharing lighthearted experiences about their time spent working on hospital wards or generously sharing their advice and medical information to those in training or members of the public, #NursesofTikTok is increasingly using the global social platform to engage and entertain like-minded followers around the world. The hashtag has a phenomenal 10.8 billion views and counting.
Below, Radar Healthcare has compiled a selection of the most informative, entertaining and accurate UK TikTok accounts; those affected or interested in the realities of working in the healthcare sector should be following.
TikTok Nurse UK (@tiktoknurseuk)
The creator of ‘TikTok Nurse UK’ – an emergency nurse practitioner affectionately known to her fans as ‘Nurse A’ – has freely discussed on her outlet how she always knew she was destined for a career in the field.
On her website, she discusses how she watched her mother leave for work wearing her crisp navy uniform and would spend hours each evening watching old repeats of Holby City and Casualty.
Boasting more than 70k followers and 1.1million likes, nurse A creates a mixture of comedic and educational content for her audience, including this recent scenario-focused video which lists the symptoms and observations a patient is displaying and asks viewers to diagnose his illness.
Nurse Nzi (@nursenzi)
Through her TikTok content, nurse and career strategist Nurse Nzi aims to help her 30.6k followers find their perfect job within the healthcare industry, top tips for preparing for a nursing interview, and even insight into some of the highest paying UK nursing jobs currently being recruited for.
Her YouTube channel features popular and useful videos for nurses with varying levels of experience, such as ‘How to apply for a band five nurse job’, ‘How to write a personal statement as a nurse’, and ‘Common interview mistakes you should avoid making as a nurse’.
Myeself (@myeself)
As a Filipino nurse working in the UK, @myeself often focuses her comedic and musical content on what it’s like being bilingual and working for the NHS, with many references to her own culture and the differences between working in the UK versus her home nation.
She also uses her platform to shine a light on the topic of NHS and healthcare worker salaries, as seen in this video that highlights the fact that teachers, police officers and government officials were all given pay rises earlier this year, yet NHS workers weren’t.
Amy Darkins (@amydarkins6)
As a working mum of one, practice nurse Amy uses her TikTok profile to showcase the highs and lows of working the often long shifts and unsociable shift patterns of a nurse alongside finding a balance with family life.
Through her often in-depth content, Amy discusses such topics as how she got into practice nursing and how it differs from her previous nursing roles, as well as a day in the life of a practice nurse to give those thinking of making a move into her field a good idea of what the role entails.
Jahine Nicole (@jahinenicole)
With an even balance of comedic content mixed with some honest posts focused on her mental health and previous experiences of trauma, Jahine Nicole uses TikTok to offer her followers an honest insight into the day-to-day experiences of being an NHS nurse in a post-Covid climate.
This ‘expectations vs reality’ video showcases the areas of her particular workplace that nurses are expected to eat in during their lunch breaks, while this TikTok emphasises all too well the huge amount of strain being a healthcare worker can put on one’s mental health.
Student Nurse Debby (@studentnurse_debby)
As her TikTok username suggests, Debby uses her TikTok account to chronicle her journey as a student nurse and the journey toward passing her exams and qualifications.
Debby often films content aimed at answering the questions of her almost 10k followers, as highlighted in this video. She is also not afraid to call out some of the negative experiences she’s been challenged with during her time as a student nurse at the deep end of the NHS.
