20 percent of nursing home employees suffer from burnout complaints

One in five employees in a nursing home suffers from depression or burnout complaints. In particular, employees who had to care for residents with corona often experience depressive symptoms. This has emerged from research by the UMCG LUMC. They conducted a large-scale survey among 1,669 employees about their health and well-being during the first corona wave, UMCG reports.

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“The differences in health may be explained by the changed working conditions of the staff who cared for infected residents during the first wave,” says lead researcher Sarah Janus of the UMCG. “This group indicates that they experience extra psychological burden when caring for infected residents.”

At the same time, care workers experience less influence on their work when caring for infected residents. “The care for infected residents is very protocolized, which means that care providers have fewer options to carry out the work in their own way.” According to Janus, this may have negative consequences for their functioning.

Extra pressure on the staff

Almost half of the respondents indicated that they worked more hours during the first corona wave. Non-healthcare employees were asked to participate in healthcare and healthcare employees had to take care of the shifts of sick colleagues or work in a corona ward. Ultimately, a third of the respondents cared for corona patients. Furthermore, it appears that 27 percent of employees have been tested for corona and that 6 percent were infected with it during the first wave.

The advice of the UMCG and LUMC is to initiate actions now to reduce workload and absenteeism. Healthcare organizations have taken various measures to increase the health and well-being of healthcare workers. Support from psychologists is very important here.

When an organization knows what is going on among employees, it becomes easier at a later stage to identify and tackle bottlenecks before psychological complaints actually develop in employees. This way, absenteeism or dropout can be prevented.

By: Nationale Zorggids

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