Nursing Engagement

Rationale:

Nursing engagement is linked to critical safety, quality, and patient experience outcomes.Nurses and the medical profession must understand the intricacies of engagement to improve patient care and move the practice to higher levels of professional interaction.

Proposed Topic:

The proposed qualitativeresearch topic examines and analyzesemergency room nurseburnout and retention. Burnout is a problem in most professions.  This is especially true with the rigors of nursing.Career aspirations and dreams represent the motivation to enter the profession. These are present at the beginning of a career and present an anticipatory set of ideal working conditions.  The actual experiences of day-to-day working conditions, workload, expectations, treatment, management, and environment represent a reality which determines the level of possible burnout or satisfaction for the nurses. The relationship of anticipated aspirations and dreams versus experience can lead to exhaustion and burnout as described by Aiken, Clarke, Sloan, Sochalski, and Silber (2002).The study will sample 25 emergency room nurses with one to five years of experience, who will be administered a survey to collect data. The survey will have respondents answer Likert Scale items indicating the level of satisfaction with various aspects of their current position, along with their career dreams and aspirations at the beginning of their career. The survey will also ask respondents to respond to a series of items which will indicate levels of burnout and likelihood to be retained within the profession. In addition to the survey, ten separate nurses will be interviewed to better assess their engagement and opinions on the practice

Independent Variable-Career dreams/aspirations and job satisfaction elements

Dependent Variables- Level of burnout/engagement, and the likely retention of emergency room nurses.

Research Question:

• What are the key differences between emergency room nurse career dreams/aspirations and their actual experience in the practice?
• What are the key factors leading to emergency room nurse burnout and possible exit from the nursing practice?