Vita Aveniņa
Riga Stradins University, Latvia
Title: Practice environment scale of the nursing work index for latvian nurses
Biography
Biography: Vita Aveniņa
Abstract
The number of health professionals is a problem that ranks among the main weaknesses of Latvian health care sector. The work environment of nurses is a significant factor that affects their work results, as well as the quality of patient care and patient safety. A correlation between the work environment, organisational factors and burnout of nurses exists. Support by the organisation and the management, as well as positive, adequate work environment attracts and retains nurses in their profession, which serves as a long term basis for the provision of high quality patient care.
The policy of internal work procedure of any institution (work environment) to a large extent depends on the administrative skills of the manager. The overload of the nurses can also be promoted by internal policies of the institution that fail to provide employee support and acknowledgement mechanisms, or provide unjust application of such mechanisms. The following hypothesis was proved in a study on the effect of work environment on the burnout of nurses conducted in the US in 2010: the better is work environment, the lower are burnout indicators of nursing personnel Work skills of the head of organisation, limited opportunities of nurses to participate in the resolution of organisational issues of the hospital, inadequate principles of the quality of care, as well as negative nurse - physician communication were mentioned as the main organisational factors that cause overload. Furthermore, it was proved during the study that the aforementioned organisational factors are also linked to emotional depletion and depersonalisation of the nursing personnel. In addition, the study has shown that reducing the exposure to these factors not only reduces the emotional, spiritual and physical depletion of nurses, but also enables to reduce cynical and negligent attitude of nurses towards their patients. Consequently - better policies of the organisation promote the decline in the degree of burnout among nursing personnel and the improvement in patient satisfaction.