The healthcare setting typically incorporates a plethora of factors that cause nurses significant stress. Specifically, nurses must manage very tight schedules, handle a tremendous amount of information, and tend to the needs of a large number of patients. The need to provide constant support to patients and ensure that they receive emotional support has necessitated the development of coping mechanisms that shield nurses form stress to an extent. Learned optimism, which can be defined as a conscious effort to recognize pessimistic ideas and choose not to be consumed by them is one of such responses.
At first glance, learned optimism might seem as an artificial attempt at avoiding confrontation with real-life concerns. However, on further inspection, especially after considering the challenges that nurses must confront regularly in the workplace, one will have to recognize the need for a tool that allows nurses to keep their resilience (Chang & Daly, 2015). In this respect, learned optimism as the means of keeping one’s composure and maintaining a positive outlook in the settings that involve high levels of stress and pressure is vital for maintaining mental and emotional well-being.
Therefore, as a coping mechanism for managing stress levels in the workplace, learned optimism allows a nurse to avoid a range of complications associated with mental health. For example, the use of learned optimism an as coping mechanism for stress management can prevent a workplace burnout from developing. In turn, workplace burnouts currently represent a major threat for nurses due to the continuous rise in the number of patients and the extent of workload. Therefore, the application of learned optimism as the means of releasing tension and reducing stress rates leads to a drop in the probability of a burnout (Kahlert & Brand, 2017).
Finally, one must mention the positive effects that learned optimism has on the emotional well-being of nurses. Due to emotional exhaustion, working in the healthcare setting implies dealing with devastation that may lead to emotional numbness (Chang & Daly, 2015). The specified outcome is particularly dangerous for nurses since providing emotional response and being empathetic to the needs of patients is one of the facets of a nurse’s workplace performance and, thus, one of the key requirements to meet. In turn, with the rise in the levels of a workplace burnout, a nurse is unlikely to meet the described requirement, which may lead to a drop in the quality of healthcare services and the resulting drop in the efficacy of the treatment administered to a patient. Therefore, it is vital for a nurse to keep the extent of motional responsiveness high and be capable of empathizing with patients and their needs for a better rapport with them.
Learned optimism has a tremendous effect on nurses’ well-being, mostly due to the effects that it has on nurses’ ability to perform under significant stress, as well as the increased influence of negative factors that increase the risk of a workplace burnout. Moreover, constant exposure to other people’s distress and the need to observe them suffering before appropriate treatment is provided to them is emotionally taxing and often devastating. Therefore, the strategies that allow managing their mental health more effectively, particularly, the ones related to meditation, contribute to nurses’ psychological and emotional well-being to a major extent. Since learning optimism as the coping strategy that allows nurses to keep their spirits high helps to avoid the described concerns, it should be recognized for the benefits that it provides to nurses.