Rogers’s model is useful for addressing the issue of nursing burnout.

Nursing staff burnout is one of the

main obstacles to effectively maintaining a culture of safety, which is a set of “shared values, beliefs,
norms, and procedures related to patient safety among members of an organization” (Weaver et al.,
2013). Many nurses, while supporting in safety culture, end up compromising it due to being
overworked. Some nurses, for example, work two full time jobs at separate facilities, which leads to
exhaustion.

The more stressed and tires a nurse becomes, the more likely mistakes are. Burnout is condition that
occurs when stress becomes so bad that it creates a kind of malaise. Though a nurse may know that
focus is important for the job, one experiencing burnout simply cannot find the motivation to keep
focus. Nurse burnout adds to anxiety and at risk behavior in workplace and poor patient nurse
communication. Nursing burnout may lead to poor decision making, example cohorting delirious patient
with frail elderly (Dall'ora, C., Griffiths, & Ball, 2015).

Rogers’s approach to nursing frames the work in a new light. While many nurses have strong motivating
factors when entering the field, seeing the results of what they do as being greater than the sum of their
parts and having a rippling effect out in the environment can help them remained focused even during
mental fatigue. Furthermore, applying Rogers’s theory to nurses themselves can help management see
the need to allow nurses to rest. There is no wisdom in having an overworked staff. Since Rogers
promotes understanding the connection of a patient to the environment, and application of her theory
in this context would allow administrators to see that nursing staff are in fact a part of a patient’s
environment. If the staff are not healthy, neither will the patients be (Dall'ora, C., Griffiths, & Ball, 2015).

Rogers’s theory works well with another model laid out by Betty Neuman, which focuses on the response
of patients to environmental stressors. Since, as was just discussed, nurses themselves are a part of a
patient’s environment, nurses who are burned out will act as a stressor to patients. Though the patient
may not perceive this stress consciously, a nurse’s action’s can have great impact on a patient’s health.
Furthermore, nurses who are burned out are more likely to create situations that are stressful for a
patient. Nurses are often responsible for patient placement within a clinic, and the loss of focus inherent
to burnout could cause them to make poor choices when choosing which environments would be best
suited to which patients (Ahmadi & Sadeghi, 2017).

Analysis and Comparison

Both models, Rogers’s Science of Unitary Human Beings and Neuman’s model addressing patient
stressors, would work well for addressing nursing burnout and creating a culture of safety. One model
stands out from the other, however, for being useful as both a motivational tool and a practical method
of approaching the workplace environment of nurses: Rogers’s model.

As was mentioned, Rogers’s theory can be a source of motivation for nurses facing burnout, allowing
them to see the importance of their work in a greater scope. But it is also a model that can be applied to
nurses themselves and which dictates that nurses are inherently linked in health to those around them.
If the nurse is unhealthy, so too will be the patient. Neuman’s model on the other hand provides very
good motivation for why patients must be kept in a stress free environment, but does little to show how
this might be done. Essentially, when applied to the specific topic of nursing burnout, Neuman’s model
says little more than what is already known: that burnout can be harmful and that patients must be
protected from the potential stressors nurses may cause them (Alligood, 2014).

As Weaver et al. (2013) demonstrates, creating a culture of safety within the health care setting is
something that must be addressed scientifically. Rather than merely hoping everyone has the same goals
in mind, there is an actual method to ensuring people are coordinating and communicating properly to
create a safe environment in which healing can occur. Rogers’s theory beats Neuman’s in this arena as
well. Though Neuman’s model is not at all against science, it does not offer any answers in this area.
Rogers’s theory is meant to be scientific and encourages an empirical approach to addressing all
problems that may arise when applying this theory. Simply put, it is more likely to help create an
evidence based practice for creature a culture of safety.

Conclusion

The work of Martha Rogers has been an important contribution to the nursing community both for its
reframing of the scope of the work being done and for its emphasis on scientific processes needed to
address the problems facing nursing. It emphasizes both the importance of the individual as well as the
connections that individual has to the environment and society as a whole. It presents human beings as
being more than the sum of their whole. At the same time, Rogers’s theory advocates for an empirical
approach to the problems facing nursing. Rogers’s work can be supplemented by Neuman’s when
addressing nursing burnout. This creates a clear chain of action that must be accomplished to maintain a
culture of safety that starts with identifying nurses as a part of the clinical environment and ends with
reducing stressors to patients that would result from nursing burnout.