Leveraging technological innovation to combat stress and burnout in the healthcare sector

Every day, millions of nurses and other frontline healthcare professionals work long, tireless hours serving both the basic and complex needs of multiple patients. It’s a mentally, physically and emotionally demanding job. It also requires a high level of specialized expertise to perform their duties calmly and efficiently in an otherwise bustling, unpredictable, and sometimes chaotic environment.

Needless to say, working under these conditions can take its toll, and it should come as no surprise that feelings of high stress and burnout regularly impact more than two-thirds of nurses across the healthcare sector.

Moreover, in addition to navigating incredibly tight schedules and the generalized sense of urgency around patient needs, healthcare professionals must remain vigilant of threats to their own safety and the wellbeing of their coworkers. That’s because instances of workplace assault and violence in hospital settings remain disproportionately high when compared with other industries.

Fortunately, healthcare technology has come a long way in recent years, and rapid advancements in a wide range of supportive systems and management tools are helping to address some of the biggest challenges facing the industry today. This is ultimately paving the way to introduce dramatically safer, less stressful environments and working conditions for frontline healthcare professionals around the world.

Taming the chaos
Without effective processes around time, patient, and asset management, keeping up with everything is both a significant practical challenge and a major source of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.

Historically, such processes have been anything but fool-proof, and high rates of stress and burnout among nursing professionals have been a clear reflection of insufficient management solutions and technology.

As healthcare records, workflows, and processes for keeping track of both patients and equipment remain unnecessarily siloed and tethered to outdated legacy systems, many healthcare workers have no choice but to merely cope with and internalize rather than tame and rise above the inherent chaos of their workplaces.

However, all of this is changing today through the integration and ongoing advancement of healthcare management technology, particularly in the realms of mobile computing and connected tracking devices.

For example, critical breakthroughs in radio frequency identification (RFID) technology are optimizing the ability of healthcare professionals to track both patients and all medical assets across the facility in real time.

For patients, it’s as simple as replacing traditional hospital wristbands with those embedded with an RFID chip, allowing nurses to track their movements around the unit and respond more quickly and effectively to potential emergencies.

Similarly, by assigning an RFID tag to medical equipment and uploading the data to AI-powered management software, nurses gain constant knowledge of where items are and can also automate the process of replenishing key assets before the supply runs out.

Importantly, the utilization of RFID chips is only one small aspect of a broader transformation and digitalization of management protocols for nursing professionals.

By streamlining workflows through the integration of modernized electronic health record (EHR) systems into interoperable mobile computing devices, hospital nurses can eliminate administrative siloes and much more readily strike that delicate balance between agility and rigid time management, moving seamlessly from task to task and at a much lower risk of compounding stress and burnout throughout their shifts.

Protecting nurses to protect patients
Workplace assault and violence has always disproportionately impacted nurses and other frontline healthcare workers, but this is a problem that has only grown worse with time, with eight in 10 nurses having experienced at least one type of workplace violence last year.

In fact, even at facilities where security teams are especially robust, there aren’t always adequate safeguards in place to ensure threats are mitigated as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Again, this issue has been in the crosshairs of technological innovation in the healthcare space for quite some time, and emergent tools have proved both highly effective and intuitive to operate.

Zebra Technologies has collaborated closely with 911cellular on a solution that allows nurses and healthcare professionals to alert security and/or police in real time of any present or potential dangers in the workplace.

Designed specifically to address instances of staff duress in a hospital setting, the solution provides both a mobile application and small button on the back of EHR-integrated devices that nurses can push discreetly. This triggers a near-immediate response from the closest security personnel or local law enforcement, whether danger is imminent, or a patient’s behavior suggests a gradually escalating threat.

Overall, these solutions provide only a glimpse into how technological innovation can be leveraged to reduce stress and burnout in the industry, as well as better protect nursing and healthcare professionals so they can focus on what matters most: caring for and optimizing patient outcomes.

So, as we celebrate National Nurses Month, we shouldn’t merely be honoring these workers’ courage and resilience in one of the toughest jobs in the world. We should also work collectively to promote the design, implementation, and improvement of the critical technologies that make their work and lives easier and more rewarding than ever before.

Kassaundra McKnight-Young is Healthcare CNIO Industry Principal, Zebra Technologies.