Content area
Full Text
Abstract: Nurses are loyal to their patients and coworkers. They often put the needs of others before their own and sometimes even before the needs of their families. This concern for others can cause conflicts that manifest as stress. Of the more than 2 million nurses in the United States, more than 62% work in hospitals. Hospitals are known to be both rewarding and stressful places to work. Like most workers, nurses face the challenge of balancing demands and achievements of work with those in their private lives. Hospital leaders can facilitate improved work-life balance (WLB) for hospital nurses by using tools already in place. Equally important, nurses can use their knowledge and resources to nurse the nurse within, which can greatly improve their experience of WLB, independent of the demands of their work environment.
Keywords: hospital nurses, work-life balance, employee health, employee assistance program
Work-life balance (WLB) is a contemporary acronym for achieving balance between work and lifestyle ambitions. Although WLB is not well defined, the implication is that the two experiences (work and home life) should be in a state of equilibrium for nurses to be happy and healthy. Nurses often describe experiencing a lack of balance between their work and life outside of work. Yet if a sense of balance between work and lifestyle demands could be achieved, fewer nurses would report stress and more would be living healthier lives at home and in the workplace.
More than 2.5 million nurses practice in the United States. Of those, more than 62% are employed by hospitals (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2011). Hospitals deliver acute health care to patients and are known to be both rewarding and stressful work environments. The American Nurses Association (ANA, 2014) reports that the three most frequent concerns of hospital nurses are related to staffing, mandatory overtime, and workplace safety (ANA, 2014).
Most nurses are happier when experiencing feelings of achievement and satisfaction from their work rather than trying to acquire an arbitrary sense of work-life balance (Vredenburgh & Trinkaus, 1983). One of the goals in this article is to recognize that nurses experience more satisfaction at home and work by using tools to manage their stress.
Stress can manifest as physical complaints and emotional...