Nursing burnout and workload can negatively impact patient and staff safety in healthcare facilities. When nurses are overwhelmed or stressed, it can lead to higher rates of medication errors, communication issues between nurses and patients, increased healthcare-associated infections, and more sick leave and absenteeism among nurses. This instability and lack of adequate staffing presents safety risks. The document discusses how administrative planning is needed to ensure appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios and support for nurses to prevent burnout, thereby maintaining safety for both patients and healthcare workers.

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Impact of Nursing Burnout and Workload to Safety of Staff and Patients
1. Background
Nurses play a pivotal role in the healthcare sector. Healthcare outcomes are highly
dependent on the quality delivery of nursing services at the health facilities and also in primary
care. Critical to healthcare is the issue of patient and staff safety. Healthcare is designed around
safety. This is because there are standardized procedures that should always be adhered to by the
nurses while delivering care. However, at times the nurses experience burnout and work
overload that adversely affect the safety of the patients and staff at the health institutions
(Needleman and Shekelle, 2019). Some of the causes of nursing burnout and high workload
include inadequate nursing staff at the facility, high number of patients to nursing ratio, and lack
of proper planning by the administration to allocate duties equitably. Nursing workload can be
defined as the existing ration between the patients and nursing professionals at a given facility
within a given timeframe. This paper would outline the significance of studying the topic nurse
burnout and workload and its impact of patient and staff safety.
2. Significance
The health outcomes of the patients and their safety rely heavily on the nursing
interventions at the care facilities. The objective of healthcare is to improve the quality of life of
patients and their wellbeing. Similarly, healthcare facility staff members would want to operate
in an environment that is safe for them. There are significant impacts to the safety and health
outcomes of the patients and staff when nurses experience high workloads and burnout. Any
health facility would want to offer high quality healthcare services to patients by improving their
health outcomes (Magalhães et al., 2017). Notably, the burnout of the nurses’ greatly affects the

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objective of the medical facilities. The underperformance would likely affect their income,
reputation and place them at a risk place of being sued for damages by both the staff members
and patients.
a. High Nurse Turnover rates
Moreover, in a facility where nurses experience burnout and excess workload there
would be a likely high employee turnover. Nurses are human beings who understand the
important of safe practice in healthcare. Burnout and excess workload like working for many
hours exposes the nurses to stress and psychological trauma. It is also a huge physical demand on
their side to keep up with the stressors while delivering quality care at the hospitals and medical
facilities (Hall et al., 2016). The factors surrounding workload and burnout can be interpreted by
the nurses as mistreatment and lack of regard for their welfare by the hospital administration. As
such, they may opt to resign and opt for new better ventures where their welfare is respected.
High turnover rates would affect quality healthcare delivery as the facility would behave to train
new nurses on their protocols and missions. This would affect patients who had formed
attachment with some of the patients (Nantsupawat, et al., 2016).
b. Medication Errors
Consequently, nursing burnout and excess workload would likely cause medication
errors. Medication errors cause untold suffering and death in many hospitals. Medication errors
are a major concern to healthcare. These errors not only contribute to poor health outcomes but
also cause healthcare facilities a lot of money to compensate. These adverse effects can easily
result when nurses are overburdened beyond their capacity. Although the medication errors can

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be caused by any medical practitioner, the probability of a medication error to be caused by a
nurse experiencing burnout is quite high. This makes the topic a very important factor because
the safety of the patients and staff are concerned. It takes only a simple error cause the death of a
patient (Cho et al., 2016; Fagerström et al., 2018).
c. Sick Leaves and Absenteeism
Consequently, nurses experiencing work overload and burnout would often take sick
leave and register high levels of absenteeism. At times the physical efforts by the nurses while
treating the patients can cause work related injuries. These injuries can include musculoskeletal
injuries and fatigue that may likely influence the employees to be absent from work (Möller and
Magalhãe, 2015). The trend of missing from work can cause adverse effects to healthcare service
delivery at the facility. This is because; in most cases nurses are delegated to work on certain
number of patients for a specified period of time. When one or two nurses experience burnout
are absent from work unannounced they would cause strain the remaining nurses who would
have to cover for their absent colleagues (Cho et al., 2016). While it may seem to be a common
scenario, it would eventually continue the cycle of burnout and excess workload. The outcome
would be increased health safety risks to both the staff and patients.
d. Communication Errors
The relationship between the nursing professionals and the patients is very critical
towards improving their quality of life. Stressed and depressed nurses who are worn out cannot
effectively communicate with patients. It is difficult for an effective communication to ensue
when one party lacks the focus, concentration and time (Aprilia et al., 2019). A nurse

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experiencing excess workload would not spend much time with a patient to develop a
meaningful health relationship. As such, the nurse may likely miss on crucial and critical cues
that would help improve the health outcome of the patient. In such cases, the nurses would rather
keep to themselves significant clues that are worth sharing with a medical professional. For
instance, a patient may experience reaction from an administered medication (MacPhee et al.,
2017). Without a nurse nearby, the client would likely experience adverse health outcomes. Also,
other staff members could experience miscommunication in the process of handing over duties at
the end of the day. The impact of miscommunication in healthcare can be devastating and should
be avoided as a priority. Thus, burnout and excess work load for the nurses affect their
relationship with the patients.
e. Health Associated Infections
This topic is also important because lack of adequate safety compliance due to nurse
burnout and excess workload could lead to health-care associated infections. Despite the
availability of the personal protective equipment for nurses and other medical professionals,
compliance to some of the regulations can be compromised. For instance, simple procedures like
washing of hands, not using enough protective equipment for patients with multi-resistant
pathogens can easily lead to spread of infections. Also, burn out can prompt a nurse to recap a
needle after use unknowingly and hence cause safety risk to themselves (Jansson et al., 2019). As
such, stressed nurses can affect the safety of other staff members in the facility by exposing them
to pathogens due to non-compliance to the safety regulations.

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3. Objectives
The aim of the teaching would be to impart information on how nurse burnout and workload
affects the safety of patients and staff in the health environment.
The impact of nursing burnout and workload to safety of patients and staff would be
demonstrated by explaining the various adverse outcomes that could arise and reinforcing them
with graphics for better clarification of the messages.
Outline of Topic
1. Background
a. Introduction of the topic to learners.
b. Definition of the key terminologies i.e. nurse burnout, nurse workload and healthcare
safety.
2. Significance of nurse burnout and workload to the safety of both patients and staff
members.
a. Medication Errors
b. Communication errors
c. Health Associated Infections
d. Sick Leaves and Absenteeism
e. High Nurse Turnover
3. Conclusion

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4. Conclusion
This topic was very important to demonstrate the impact of nurse burnout and workload to the
safety of staff and patients. As noted, when nurses are exposes to excess workload, the effect
would be felt by the staff members and the patients. Some of the safety concerns that would
result from the nurse burnout and workload include increased possibility of medication errors,
communication issues, frequent sick leaves and absenteeism, high turnover of nurses and
possibility of spreading health acquired infections. These risks would lower the safety level at
the medical facilities greatly and hence adverse health outcomes. Hence, this topic was important
to protect both staff members and the patients from safety risks that they could be exposed as a
result of being associated with nurses experiencing excess workload and burnout. The
significance of this topic was demonstrated by in-depth explanation of the suggested outcomes
likely to be experienced by the staff and patients and how they can compromise their quality of
health. Graphics also got included to emphasize on the importance of the topic and need to plan
and hire adequate nurses for health facilities.
In the future it will be important to safeguard the safety of staff and patients. This would be
possible through adequate planning and organization of the medical administrators to hire
adequate and enough qualified nurses to avoid burnout experiences and excess workload.
Further, it would be necessary for the medical facilities to develop and implement assessment
and evaluation measures routinely to determine the efficiency of healthcare services and collect
the opinions of nurses. These measures would help maintain a sustainable safety in hospitals for
both patients and staff by reducing nurse burnout and workload.

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5. References
Aprilia, T.D., Somantri, I. and Mirwanti, R., 2019. Nurses’ Mental Workload in Critical Care
Rooms and Emergency Department. Journal of Nursing Care, 2(3).
Cho, E., Lee, N.J., Kim, E.Y., Kim, S., Lee, K., Park, K.O. and Sung, Y.H., 2016. Nurse staffing
level and overtime associated with patient safety, quality of care, and care left undone in
hospitals: a cross-sectional study. International journal of nursing studies, 60, pp.263-271.
Fagerström, L., Kinnunen, M. and Saarela, J., 2018. Nursing workload, patient safety incidents
and mortality: an observational study from Finland. BMJ open, 8(4), p.e016367.
Hall, L.H., Johnson, J., Watt, I., Tsipa, A. and O’Connor, D.B., 2016. Healthcare staff wellbeing,
burnout, and patient safety: a systematic review. PloS one, 11(7), p.e0159015.
Jansson, M.M., Syrjälä, H.P. and Ala-Kokko, T.I., 2019. Association of nurse staffing and
nursing workload with ventilator-associated pneumonia and mortality: a prospective, single-
center cohort study. Journal of Hospital Infection, 101(3), pp.257-263.
MacPhee, M., Dahinten, V. and Havaei, F., 2017. The impact of heavy perceived nurse
workloads on patient and nurse outcomes. Administrative Sciences, 7(1), p.7.
Magalhães, A.M.M.D., Costa, D.G.D., Riboldi, C.D.O., Mergen, T., Barbosa, A.D.S. and Moura,
G.M.S.S.D., 2017. Association between workload of the nursing staff and patient safety
outcomes. Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP, 51.
Möller, G. and Magalhães, A.M.M.D., 2015. Bed baths: nursing staff workload and patient
safety. Texto & Contexto-Enfermagem, 24(4), pp.1044-1052.

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Nantsupawat, A., Nantsupawat, R., Kunaviktikul, W., Turale, S. and Poghosyan, L., 2016. Nurse
burnout, nurse‐ reported quality of care, and patient outcomes in Thai hospitals. Journal of
Nursing Scholarship, 48(1), pp.83-90.
Needleman, J. and Shekelle, P.G., 2019. More ward nursing staff improves inpatient outcomes,
but how much is enough?.