Healing the Healers: Fifty Years of Global Challenges and Progress in Nurse Psychological Wellbeing
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: IntroductionGlobal health workforce shortages are projected to reach up to 10 million by 2030 (WHO 2022a), and protecting nurses' psychological wellbeing is essential for attracting and retaining staff who are critical to sustaining current and future healthcare delivery.Over the past 50 years, the nursing profession has undergone profound transformation, particularly in the area that has shaped much of my own career: nurse psychological wellbeing at work.Having begun my nurse training in 1979, my professional journey has almost spanned the lifetime of this journal, 47 of its 50 years.When training as an RN (not a degree programme) the focus was on clinical competence, obedience and discipline, with nothing related to the emotional or psychological realities of the work.The curriculum contained little, if anything, about stress, burnout, or moral distress, despite my early and vivid experiences of all three.Equally in clinical practice there was minimal recognition or support for the psychological demands placed on nurses and we were very much thrown in at the very deep end with students carrying extraordinary responsibilities; being left in charge of a men's surgical ward on night duty as a third-year student, with only a second-year colleague alongside me is a stark and very stressful memory.At the time, not knowing what I didn't know felt protective, ignorance as insulation, but it was certainly not protective for the patients.Just 2 years after qualifying, I left nursing; I thought for good, overwhelmed by burnout and moral distress (Maben 2015).My interest in the psychological well-being of nurses began then, although it would be another 10 years before I embarked on an academic research career in this area.Historically, nursing emphasised duty, moral resilience and self-sacrifice (Baly 1995) and the recognition of the importance of nurse wellbeing at work developed slowly.I believe the first paper in the Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN) to focus on psychological wellbeing was written by Sister Dolan and published in 1987 (Dolan 1987); it examined the relationship between burnout and job satisfaction in nurses.The shift toward exploring psychological aspects of nursing, including stress, burnout and emotional resilience became more prominent in the 1990s, as the profession began to recognise the importance of the psychological health of nurses in relation to nursing practice.Today, the concept of nurse psychological wellbeing and selfcare has become a cornerstone of professional practice, central to workforce sustainability, the quality and safety of patient care and the performance of entire health systems.In this commentary, I trace this journey and highlight the key work that has shaped our understanding of this fundamentally important topic, including insights from my own research. | Trends in Nurse Psychological WellbeingThe work of Isabel Menzies Lyte in 1960 was one of the first studies to examine nurse psychological wellbeing.She took a case-study approach to the social problems of nursing, identifying that nurses' work generates high levels of anxiety, which organisations manage by creating social systems and routines that may protect nurses collectively, but may displace stress onto individual staff.Her 'social defenses against anxiety' theory explains how institutional structures, role fragmentation
Source: Journal of Advanced Nursing
DOI: 10.1111/jan.70436
Author: Jill Maben
Institution: University of Surrey
Language: English
Subfield: Occupational Therapy
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $5,450
OpenAlex ID: W4417449880