Affiliations

Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center

Presentation Notes

Professional Development poster presented at Nursing Passion: Re-Igniting the Art & Science, Advocate Aurora Health Nursing & Research Conference 2022; November 9, 2022; virtual.

Abstract

Background/Introduction: Nurses at a large urban hospital experienced frequent patient deaths during the COVID-19 epidemic. Leaders recognized nurses struggled with grief after patient deaths and with continued resiliency.

Purpose: Leaders reached out to a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Education asking for resources to help nurses grieve in a healthy way and experience ongoing resiliency.

Method: The Clinical Nurse Specialist collaborated with a Chaplain who created a resiliency process called “The 4-R’s” (Mahoney, 2021) for nurses grieving patient deaths. The process steps are: 1) recognize, 2) reflect, 3) ritualize, and 4) reorient. Nurses who participated in one-hour education offerings to learn the process and its strategies received “The 4-R’s” nursing tip sheet. A convenience sample of shared governance councils and committees answered 4 pre-survey and 6 post-survey questions utilizing a QR code and link generated from the survey created in the Office 365 application, Forms.

Results: 67 nurses participate in the pre-survey: 95% indicate experiencing patient death. 70% think a resiliency strategy is helpful. 82% think a resiliency strategy would help their peers. 45 nurses participate in the post-survey: 84% think a resiliency strategy is helpful, an increase of 14%. 91% think a resiliency strategy would help their peers, an increase of 9%. 12 nurses answer, “Will “The 4-R’s” benefit you?” 92 % answer yes. All nurses, 100%, think the process is beneficial for other nurses.

Discussion: Participants favorably reference the training and request it to support all nurses. This results in multiple course offerings to internal and external nursing groups. Future research includes use of a valid and reliable resiliency tool to evaluate “The 4-R’s”.

Implications for Practice: Consistent use of “The 4 R’s” process promotes self-care, healthy grieving, and nursing resiliency inside and outside the hospital. Resilient nurses decrease compassion fatigue, moral distress, and nursing turnover.

Document Type

Poster


 

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