Rutgers School of Nursing—Camden professor conducts research to prevent nurse burnout

Catherine Stubin, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Nursing—Camden, is conducting a research project that aims to study mental health and burnout challenges that nurses face, according to this press release.

This research will be done under the Hillary Project, which honors the memory of Rutgers—New Brunswick School of Nursing alum Hillary Herskowitz and intends to find and implement various approaches to preventing burnout among young health care workers.

Stubin told The Daily Targum that the Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs (WRI) at the Camden campus created the Hillary Project after they heard about Herskowitz's untimely death and that the dean of the Rutgers School of Nursing—Camden and WRI selected her to conduct this research.

Stubin said that the research project's purpose is to understand the effectiveness of the mental health resources that are offered to nursing students at the Camden campus.

"We all know that college students are stressed, and hopefully, they'll take these strategies to their professional practice," she said.

Stubin said that she will use quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct her research. Quantitatively, she will be sending surveys to and interviewing nursing faculty, students and alums. Qualitatively, she will conduct focus groups to understand how students and alums deal with stress and prevent burnout.

Stubin said that common signs of burnout in nurses are exhaustion, negativity and cynicism. She said that health care workers who experience burnout could have irregular sleep patterns, reduced attention span and decreased productivity in the workplace.

Stubin said that self-care and resilience are critical to stopping burnout. She hopes to learn which specific strategies are effective for this from her research with alumni. Then, these strategies can be incorporated into the nursing curriculum.

In Stubin's classes, she uses a "wellness wheel," a visual tool that helps students work on various facets of their mental and physical health. At the beginning of the semester, she has her students set a wellness goal that they can achieve by the end of the semester.

She said that college students are busy, so some goals, like exercising at a gym five days a week, may not be attainable. But, she said that walking to an academic building rather than taking a bus is an example of an attainable physical wellness goal.

She said that students can also make goals to improve their financial and spiritual health.

"You have to take care of yourselves," she said. "I always tell my students, you can't give a hundred percent to your patients if you aren't a hundred percent yourself."

Stubin said that she hopes to increase visibility through her research and create a curriculum that will give future nurses the self-care and resilience strategies they need in their careers.

"I hope that the Hillary Project basically will offer hope and help for the future nurse workforce," she said.