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Mental health among nurses has improved 6% in the past year — from 25.5% to 31.5%, according to a new report.
Respondents to the “2024 State of Nursing Report,” conducted by Incredible Health, attributed the increase to “health systems making an effort to build community, provide stress management tools, and improve work-life balance.”
The increase can also be attributed to COVID-19 subsiding, according to Incredible Health CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Iman Abuzeid.
The study included data analysis of more than 1 million profiles on the Incredible Health platform in February 2024, along with a survey of more than 3,300 registered nurses in the same timeframe.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital systems nationwide have attempted to address these concerns with varied success. However, Mount Sinai in New York City — one of the hardest hit regions in the early months of the pandemic — set up a “recharge room” for frontline workers.
“In the course of an afternoon, I teamed up with a long-time collaborator of mine, a group called Studio Elsewhere — they create these immersive, multisensory experiences that are actually designed to change your physiology — to create rooms that can create all sorts of physiological effects within people,” Dr. David Putrino, co-director of Abilities Research Center and director of rehabilitation innovation, said in 2020 on the Road to Resilience podcast.
The room included artificial plants, projected HD nature images, and other elements that have been proven to “reduce blood pressure, decrease heart rate, [and] reduce stress hormones in the observer,” Putrino said. The room also featured music known to reduce stress and aromatherapy reminiscent of nature.
“What we’re seeing is that this experience creates enormous short-term stress relief,” Putrino said. “And that’s wonderful to see, and that’s been really gratifying to see that we’re actually having an impact on short-term stress. But on a broader perspective in terms of organizational wellbeing, taking the pulse of an organization, just hearing the responses to the room of, ‘It is so nice that the hospital system is doing this for us. It’s so nice to know that the system has our back.’ That really means a lot to a lot of people.”
Just two years ago, a separate Trusted Health survey of nurses found that 95% believed their mental health wasn’t a priority in the healthcare industry or that it was a priority without enough support.
“My interpretation of these findings is that the majority of nurses see the conversations and campaigns about mental health as mere lip service,” wrote Danielle Bowie, Trusted Health’s vice president for clinical strategy and transformation, in a STAT opinion piece, “and believe that the health care industry has made little in the way of substantive changes to make nursing a more sustainable career path.”
Establishing a supportive environment is one way healthcare systems can improve the mental health of their nurses. This, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, includes:
Proactive and helpful supervisors that promote:
Similarly, a 2023 Journal of Medical Internet Research study found that an online resiliency training program, Resilience Enhancement Online Training for Nurses (REsOluTioN), was “acceptable, engaging, perceived as useful, and nurses were keen for it to be implemented to optimize resilience, psychological health, communication, and workplace environments.”
For nurses who don’t feel as if they have enough mental health support from their employer, that’s where organizations like the American Nurses Foundation come in. From its Stress & Burnout Prevention Pilot Program to a Well-Being Initiative, the organization aims to help practitioners as much as possible.
“What nurses need now is a radical transformation in all levels of support and resources they receive,” ANF Executive Director Kate Judge said in response to the Trusted Health survey. “We need everyone in positions of power and decision-making ability to invest in nursing. The fate of our health care system depends on it.”
The top three reasons nurses have opted not to seek mental health support include believing they do not need it (49%), a lack of time (29%), and believing they should be able to handle their own mental health (23%), according to a May 2023 survey conducted by the American Nurses Foundation.
“Investments in resources for mental health and well-being span the continuum — from mental healthcare for those experiencing clinical symptoms to well-being support tools and programs to promote healthy behaviors and mitigate sources of stress. On the higher-acuity end of the continuum, providing employees with free or subsidized access to professionally provided therapy or counseling services could help reduce the barriers employees face in getting the care they need,” a 2023 McKinsey & Company report stated. “On the lower-acuity end, providing access to resources and training on mental-health literacy, self-monitoring, and adaptability skills could help nurses identify and mitigate sources of stress.”
The most recent State of the Nursing Industry study shows a modest improvement in the mental health of nurses. And while some healthcare organizations and institutions have taken steps to add wellness or mental health resources and support in a professional setting, there is still an overall belief that enough isn’t being done. Addressing underlying issues of burnout, such as the workforce shortage, flexible schedules, and the like, could be a step in the right direction toward overall better mental health for the nursing industry.
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