Lauren Ghazal, PhD, joined Michigan Minds for the National Nurses Week Special Series. Ghazal is a postdoctoral research fellow at the U-M School of Nursing Center for Improving Patient and Population Health (CIPPH) and the Rogel Cancer Center. Her two main areas of research focus on how to improve the quality of life of adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer, and the nursing workforce where she’s been involved with projects that explore experiences of nurses working throughout the pandemic. As a nurse practitioner and current researcher, she provides insight on the challenges that nurses have been and are currently facing and offers resources regarding mental health support for healthcare workers.
Ghazal authored an opinion article for CNN that discusses how the nursing workforce will continue to crumble if changes aren’t made, and shares the desire to write the article was driven from her clinical experiences as a family nurse practitioner, as well as the research she was conducting with NYU. She explains the unique lens that she has as a provider and a researcher, highlighting key messages from the article about how nurses were already struggling before the pandemic and continue to face challenges in the workforce.
“The general population was not quite understanding just how much nurses were suffering. When I was asked to contribute my perspective, I jumped on the opportunity as a chance to amplify the visibility and voices of nurses across all settings of healthcare in the United States,” she says.
From exhaustion due to poor sleep and working extra hours to personal stress and workplace violence, Ghazal explains how the pandemic has exacerbated issues related to the well-being of nurses, causing many to leave the workforce as patient volume increases across care settings. She shares that the nurse-to-patient ratio is steep, contributing to the emotional toll of caring for patients throughout the pandemic.
“As many studies have shown, the health and well-being of nurses influence the quality, safety, and cost of the care that they are able to provide to patients. There are also new stressors that nurses deal with because of the pandemic: risk of infection, workplace violence, high physical demands, increased workload, complex patients, and challenging social and ethical issues. We are living in really strange and complex times and these stressors lead to nurse burnout, fatigue, exhaustion, and ultimately poor mental health.”
Ghazal explains how nurses have long been advocates for their patients, but now nurses need their patients and employers to advocate for them. She highlights ways that the public can support nurses to create change. First, Ghazal says that the public can continue to follow evidence based public health guidance, including getting vaccinated, continuing to wear high quality masks, and donating blood if possible. Second, the public can help nurses by being advocates for better working conditions for the workforce by writing to their senators and expressing the need and importance of safer conditions for nurses.
Ghazal expands on the shared experience of nurses in a “tug of war” between taking care of themselves and taking care of others when it comes to volunteering or picking up extra shifts. “Many nurses are left to silently suffer as they face these overwhelming feelings of exhaustion, anxiety, sadness, irritability—that are continuing to chip away daily at our mental health.”
In addition to National Nurses Week May 6-12, May also celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month. In relation to the toll that nurses face in regards to their mental health, Ghazal shares resources to support the well-being of nurses, others healthcare professionals, and the public:
Nursing-Specific Mental-Health Support
- American Holistic Nurses Association
- American Nurses Association Mental Health Support & COVID-19 Wellbeing Initiative
Mental-Health Support
Remote/Online Therapists
