SECONDARY TRAUMA IN MENTAL HEALTH NURSES
Mental health nurses worldwide play a major role in ensuring that mental health patients are taken care of while under their care. The experiences that they go through while taking care of the mental health patients can sometimes trigger secondary trauma among the nurses. Three major cases trigger secondary trauma among mental health nurses. They include burnouts, empathy towards mental health patients, and fatigue.
Research objectives
The purpose of carrying out this research is to determine the cause of Secondary Trauma in mental health nurses and recommend ways to help keep up with their mental health.
Research strategy
Results and Findings
Several findings were obtained from the analysis of the data collected. Almost all the nurses across the world who are suffering from secondary trauma is very high. According to the study, a nurse goes through secondary trauma and experiences mental health problems, such as distress, at least once in their career (Christodoulou-Fella et al. 2017). Trauma among nurses is triggered by burnout, empathy for suffering, and fatigue (Hinderer et al. 2014). Apart from that, most nurses fear seeking help when experiencing secondary trauma since they fear stigma and feel that all the help should be given to the patients since they deserve it more Komachi et al. 2012). Most nurses who experience secondary trauma have reported that it has affected their performance at work. Some have even been suspended without their superiors, noticing that they are experiencing secondary trauma.
Discussion
From the results obtained from the study, it is clear that nurses need help to deal with secondary trauma to improve their mental health. Nurses are suffering from secondary trauma, even though they are not ready to accept that they need help improve their mental health. Nurses have to ensure that their mental health is checked often to ensure that their work productivity is optimum. There are various ways of dealing with secondary stress, including talking to a professional, such as a work therapist. However, they need to take the step of accepting help to deal with secondary trauma.
Recommendation
The healthcare system should introduce medical professionals’ sessions, especially nurses, to check on their mental health and secondary trauma level. This will help the nurses who shy away from help accept that they need help to deal with their secondary trauma. However, they need to take the step of accepting help to deal with secondary trauma.
Conclusion
Secondary trauma in mental health nurses is a problem that needs to be addressed by the various health care sectors across the world. Most nurses who have secondary trauma are not seeking help, so there is a need to address secondary trauma in mental health nurses.
Table of contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………2
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..5
Literature review…………………………………………………………………………..6
Results and Findings……………………………………………………………………….
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………..
Conclusion and Recommendation…………………………………………………………..
References…………………………………………………………………………………..
Introduction
The role that is played by the mental health nurses in the community is very significant. Like any other workplace, mental health is very important for maximum productivity. However, mental health workers’ conditions and experiences every day while at work are more traumatizing and stressful than the other workplaces. Mental health nurses have to see suffering patients while at work and take care of them until they are discharged. There are three major causes of secondary trauma among the mental health nurses: burnout, empathy towards the mental health patients, and fatigue. Mental health nurses face the working condition and experiences daily while at work can trigger secondary trauma. Therefore, their mental health is at risk, and they need help in dealing with secondary trauma like any other human being. However, most mental health nurses fail to take care of their mental health. They assume that they are used to these conditions and that they might have seen worse. The empathy that the mental health nurses have for their patients gives them the impression that their mental health condition is okay and that their patients should be given priority. Some mental health nurses fail to address their mental condition due to the fear of stigma from their fellow workmates. They fear that they might be perceived as not qualified for the job or cannot handle mental health nursing. Mental health nurses experience secondary trauma from the workplace at least once in their career. Their productivity at work is greatly affected since their mental state is affected by stress and fatigue. They see their patients going through eventually affect their mental health, so there is a need for nurses to take care of their mental health. An integrative review of the literature was the most preferred research method for the study due to the vast research carried out on the topic of Secondary Trauma in mental health nurses. The purpose of carrying out this research is to determine the cause of Secondary Trauma in mental health nurses and recommend ways to help keep up with their mental health.
Literature review
Various research has been conducted on the topic of secondary trauma in mental health nurses. They have focused on secondary trauma among mental health nurses using empathy towards mental health patients. PICO research strategy was used in obtaining data from the research articles. The strategy focuses on four parts of the research: the patient, intervention, comparison, and outcome. Mental health nurses experiencing work-related secondary trauma represent the patient. The different experiences they go through while taking care of mental health patients, which triggers the secondary trauma, represent the intervention. The third part of the strategy is a Comparison between the numbers of secondary trauma cases that are not work-related with the numbers of cases of work-related secondary trauma secondary. The outcome is represented by the conclusion of the analysis of the secondary trauma among mental health nurses.
Eight articles were reviewed to determine the strategies that can help mental health nurses take care of their mental health. There are two main studies that the articles were subjected to while carrying out the review. These studies include longitudinal and cross-sectional. The articles were searched for on various healthcare and medical databases. They included CINAHL, PubMed, and PsycINFO databases, where the articles were searched for the years 2010 to the present. Keywords used in searching for these articles in these databases included secondary trauma, mental health nurses, vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, and PTSD.
Several things were considered selecting the articles that were reviewed in the study. Some of these aspects include:
- The research article must have a sample size of fewer than ten subjects within the study region.
- The research article must have a study sample that is even based on gender and age.
- The research article must have adhered to the ethical considerations of carrying out research.
- The research article must have been done in the last ten years to determine the most recent medical professionals’ mental health trends and the developed strategies that can help them take care of their mental health.
- The research article must not be biased to ensure that the results of the study do not bias.
Compared to other professionals, there was a lot of literature discussing concerns related to mental health nurses. Therefore, the threshold for including other articles other than the ones that examined medical professionals was lower. The inclusion and exclusion criteria identified the characteristics that limited the articles to make the reviewed article eligible. The criteria employed in this article included the date of publication, the language of the publication, and specific health conditions examined.
Results and Findings
With the emerging mental conditions of patients in the mental health care institutions, secondary Trauma in mental health nurses has been getting worse as mental health nurses adjust and take care of patients with emerging mental conditions. The working conditions become unbearable for most mental health nurses since they fail to take care of their mental health. Secondary trauma can lead to stress and fatigue and reduce productivity in the workplace among mental health workers across the globe.
According to the research by Komachi et al. (2012) is based on an empathetic point of view, nurses can experience trauma while taking care of their mental health patients. The study reveals that secondary trauma among mental nurses caused by non-life-threatening events is lower across the Japanese health care system than those caused by life-threatening events. Mental health nurses in health care systems are exposed to experiences such as seeing patients struggling for their life which is a picture that is hard to forget. These experiences begin developing secondary trauma among these patients. According to Elkonin (2011), mental health nursing is a stressful occupation that exposes nurses to secondary traumatic experiences, which affects their mental health. However, nurses tend to deny the negative impact of secondary trauma, hence keeping their mental state to themselves and experiencing subsequent burnouts.
References
Beck, C.T., and Gable, R.K., 2012. A mixed-methods study of secondary traumatic stress in labor and delivery nurses. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 41(6), pp.747-760.
Beck, C.T., 2011. Secondary traumatic stress in nurses: A systematic review. Archives of psychiatric nursing, 25(1), pp.1-10.
Christodoulou-Fella, M., Middleton, N., Papathanassoglou, E.D. and Karanikola, M.N., 2017. Explored the association between nurses’ moral distress and secondary traumatic stress syndrome: implications for patient safety in mental health services—BioMed research international, 2017.
Cieslak, R., Shoji, K., Luszczynska, A., Taylor, S., Rogala, A., and Benight, C.C., 2013. Secondary trauma self-efficacy: Concept and measurement. Psychological Assessment, 25(3), p.917.
Elkonin, D., & Van der Vyver, L. (2011). Positive and negative emotional responses to work-related trauma of intensive care nurses in private health care facilities. Health SA Gesondheid, 16(1).
Hinderer, K.A., VonRueden, K.T., Friedmann, E., McQuillan, K.A., Gilmore, R., Kramer, B., and Murray, M., 2014. Burnout, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, and secondary traumatic stress in trauma nurses. Journal of Trauma Nursing, 21(4), pp.160-169.
Komachi, M.H., Kamibeppu, K., Nishi, D., and Matsuoka, Y., 2012. Secondary traumatic stress and associated factors among Japanese nurses working in hospitals. International journal of nursing practice, 18(2), pp.155-163.
Mangoulia, P., Koukia, E., Alevizopoulos, G., Fildissis, G., & Katostaras, T. (2015). Prevalence of secondary traumatic stress among psychiatric nurses in Greece. Archives of psychiatric nursing, 29(5), 333-338.
Von Rueden, K.T., Hinderer, K.A., McQuillan, K.A., Murray, M., Logan, T., Kramer, B., Gilmore, R. and Friedmann, E., 2010. Secondary traumatic stress in trauma nurses: Prevalence and exposure, copying, and personal/environmental characteristics. Journal of Trauma Nursing, 17(4), pp.191-200.