When Nurses Fall Ill
Mental Healthcare for Healthcare Workers
Nurses take our lives into their hands daily. Thousands of patients pass through bustling hospitals waiting to address their various ailments with one of the world’s most in-demand professions. Doctors rely on them, clinics and hospitals can’t operate without them. Nurses deserve our appreciation, gratitude, and proper access to mental healthcare to address their own needs.
Suicide is an epidemic among healthcare workers, especially nurses. Long hours on their feet, limited breaks, and plenty of time spent in a stressful environment away from anything of comfort may be a necessary part of the profession, but it is costing them their lives.
The Picture of a Nurse
The words that the American Journal of Nursing use to describe the suicide epidemic among nurses are cold and stale. The prevalence is described as “disturbing.” Its study is “inadequate.” Often, we see nurses roles outlined as being overworked, yet never without a smiling face in a crowded waiting room. However, they are under mass amounts of stress. A medical environment, and partially one that could contribute to medical errors such as “never events”, surgical errors, and other forms of malpractice, often carries severe emotional stressors such as:
- Being a witness to human death and dying
- Inadequate equipment
- Excessive Workload
- Ethical conflicts
- Inadequate breaks
Many nurses are falling into “Nurse fatigue”, which can directly affect the quality of their work. In turn, using caffeine or energy drinks/pills to make it through another double, another night shift on less than 4 hours of sleep severely impairs mental health. One study showed that: “Sleep loss is cumulative and by the end of the workweek, the sleep debt (sleep loss) may be significant enough to impair decision making, initiative, integration of information, planning and plan execution, and vigilance.”
The problems faced at work caused by a lack of sleep and stress do not simply end there.
A balance of work, life, and death
Over 44,965 people died by suicide in 2016, making it the 10th leading cause of death in the nation. There were 395,000 self-inflicted injuries and 1.3 million suicide attempts. Nurses were often at the forefront of helping save lives, processing attempts in the emergency room. But how many of us have brushed off scars as patient-inflicted injuries, or teary, sullen eyes as “hazards of the job” while under a nurses care?
Not even the CDC has cared to accurately measure the dangers nurses face. They have families, a demanding job, and little time for solace during their long shifts. Risk factors for nurse suicide include:
- Past attempts
- Mood disorders
- Access to means, such as prescription medication, sharp implements and toxic substances
- Feelings of inadequacy in their role
- A lack of culture that promotes safety and wellness (especially in mental health)
Without hard data to determine how many nurses fall victim to a lack of action in a culture of silence, we must focus on prevention. A study on workplace wellness reported that nurses felt cared for when their leaders saw them as whole people, not simply a tool in the workplace. To an employee already facing an uphill battle with mental health, this could be the difference between life and death.
Workplaces need to show nurses that they are just as valuable when they become patients as they are as workers. They need compassion, suicide screenings, positive reinforcement and shorter shifts with proper breaks so a lack of sleep doesn’t affect their mental health further.
Nurses are people, just as mortal as anyone in the Emergency Room. Healthcare providers should take heed to care for their employees in order to keep beds empty, nurses happier, children with parents and most importantly: to save lives.
Nurses do so much for us. They deserve to have the favor returned.