After several months of heavy patient loads in the Emergency Departmen

QUESTION

After several months of heavy patient loads in the Emergency Department and inability to secure sufficient and experienced staff, the department is especially taxed by a train accident that brings in many seriously injured individuals.

You observe that Rama ignores the requests of several of the injured, even when time is available to care for them and is rude to two elderly patients. You are concerned that Rama is evidencing which state?

a. Hardiness
b. Depression
c. Role ambiguity
d. Depersonalization

ANSWER:

ANS: D
A characteristic of burnout is depersonalization, a state characterized by distancing oneself from the work itself and developing negative attitudes toward work in general (Greenglass et al., 2001). Depersonalization is commonly described as a feeling of being outside one’s body, feeling as if one is a machine or robot, an “unreal” feeling that one is in a dream or that one “is on automatic pilot.” Generally, subjective symptoms of unreality make the nurse uneasy and anxious. Nurses pushed to do too much in too little time may distance themselves from patients as a means of dealing with emotional exhaustion.