American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
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The COVID-19 pandemic has been distressing to health care professionals, causing significant burnout. Burnout has resulted in notable rates of mental health symptoms and job turnover. Hospitals have incorporated programming to meet the needs of health care professionals. ⋯ In addition to educational seminars, programs that address lasting distress should be offered to health care professionals. Targeting job-related burnout at organizational and systemic levels may ameliorate distress. This article discusses methods of integrating organizational programs into clinics.
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Use of the 3 Wishes Project to Help Individualize End-of-Life Care in a Medical Intensive Care Unit.
Multiple organizations recommend that individualized end-of-life (EOL) care should be standard practice. However, a standardized approach does not exist because EOL care should be individually tailored. The 3 Wishes Project is an EOL intervention that provides direction for individualized care with 3 goals: dignify death, celebrate the patient's life, and support family members and the intensive care unit clinicians caring for the patient. Patients and families are given the opportunity to choose 3 wishes during the dying process. ⋯ The survey data support the 3 Wishes Project as a method that allowed the medical team to individualize EOL care and as a valuable tool for incorporation at the bedside.
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Improving retention of nurses working in critical care is an urgent priority. Ideas on how to do this abound, but actual data are inconclusive. One common theory is that simply increasing nurse resiliency will minimize turnover. ⋯ The study findings are consistent with current literature indicating that prevention of compassion fatigue and burnout cannot be achieved by the efforts of individuals alone but requires collaboration between professionals and their institutions, with special attention to 3 elements: (1) a healthy work environment, (2) organizational support, and (3) nurse resiliency.