Blow Out Burnout: Decreasing Turnover, Increasing Self-Care

Project Topic

Decreasing burnout and turnover

Hospital Unit

Cardiac Medical Intensive Care Unit

CSI Participants

Hannah Bancroft, BSN, RN, CCRN
Blaire Guidry, BSN, RN, CCRN
Coryn Rodrigue, RN
Heather Rouyer, BSN, RN, CCRN
Nicole Wilson, RN

Project Goals/Objectives

1. Implement new processes for nurses to utilize during end-of-life care
2. Provide readily available resources to the staff to increase self-care
3. Decrease staff turnover rates 10%
4. Increase employee engagement 10%
5. Decrease number of staff feeling “burned out” 10% as compared to three-month survey

Project Outcomes

1. Decreased turnover rate 5% between 2018 and 2019
2. Increased employee engagement 8%
3. Increased Healthy Work Environments (HWE) aggregate score from 3.81 to 3.96 (4.0 is excellent)
4. Decreased employee depersonalization 4%

Project Overview

The turnover rates in our unit were higher than the hospital average. In 2018, our turnover rate was 24.2% and our employee engagement score was just 46%. In an effort to decrease burnout and reduce our turnover rate, we implemented a project designed to assist staff in creating healthy coping mechanisms, to promote self-care and support our staff, and to assist nurses with end-of-life care.

We put interventions in place during our project kickoff, conducted a test of change and educated unit staff about our project. In 2019, our engagement score increased to 54% and our turnover decreased to 19.4%.

The feedback about our project’s interventions has been positive. One of the most successful interventions has been securing the assistance of our critical care medicine and palliative care teams in offering families the opportunity to fingerprint their loved one at end-of-life. This intervention has spread beyond our unit and is a big satisfier amongst nursing staff, as they feel a part of the end-of-life process and that they are making a difference.