For years, news outlets, medical organizations, and nurses themselves have been sounding the alarm that nurses are feeling burned out. A recent Stanford University study confirms this: nurses are at their breaking point. It's a problem that impacts patient care, and it can impact the professional licenses of nurses.

The study, a comprehensive meta-analysis conducted by Dr. Tait Shanafelt, looked at data from over 288,000 nurses across 32 countries, and the findings were eye-opening. The research demonstrates that burnout significantly correlates with increased medication errors, missed care events, and adverse patient safety incidents.

If your professional license is at risk because of burn-out related or other errors, call the Lento Law Firm's Professional License Defense Team at 888.535.3686 or contact us online today.

In other words, when nurses experience burnout, there are more hospital-acquired infections, more patients falling, more medication mistakes, and more instances of care being left undone.

Burnout Leads to Medical Mistakes

These are the types of incidents that frequently trigger investigations by state boards of nursing.

When a nurse's professional license comes under scrutiny due to such incidents, it's critical that they hire an experienced attorney who understands how to help them protect their professional license.

Burnout-related errors that can trigger board investigations include:

• Medication administration errors
• Documentation omissions or errors
• Failure to complete required assessments
• Missed care due to exhaustion or overwhelming patient loads
• Adverse patient outcomes resulting from delayed interventions

What's particularly interesting is that the study found that it doesn't matter how old the nurses are, their gender, how long they've been working, or even where they're located—the pattern stays the same. Emotional exhaustion and feeling detached from patients seem to cause the biggest problems with patient safety, even more than feeling unfulfilled at work.

According to Lambert Zixin Li, one of the study's authors, the situation has actually been getting worse over time despite all the efforts to improve things. But there's a silver lining—even small reductions in nurse burnout could make a big difference across multiple patient outcomes.

Help is Available

If you're facing potential disciplinary action, hiring a lawyer who understands professional license defense is critical. The Professional License Defense Team at the Lento Law Firm can:

• Provide early intervention by responding to initial board inquiries in a way that protects the nurse's interests while demonstrating a commitment to patient safety.
• Help compile and present evidence regarding workplace conditions, staffing ratios, and other systemic factors that may have contributed to the incident.
• Negotiate alternative resolutions such as additional training or supervised practice rather than license suspension.
• Ensure due process rights are protected throughout any investigation or disciplinary proceedings.
• Assist in developing corrective action plans that satisfy board requirements while being practically achievable.

A skilled attorney can help frame incidents within the broader systemic challenges identified in studies like this one. The Lento Law Firm's Professional License Defense Team can help you protect your professional license. Call us at 888.535.3686 or contact us online today.

As Dr. Shanafelt noted in the study, we shouldn't just be teaching nurses to "better tolerate a broken system." And we certainly shouldn't expect nurses to pay the price for a broken system.