Kate Peterson saw firsthand how important the well-being of nurses is to the care of patients while working as a pediatric nurse in a Peoria hospital.
“Burnout is one of the big things that I identified there,” Peterson said. “When you see that burnout, and that increased stress, there’s a lot of turnover, which impacts a lot of different things, with patient care being one of them.”
Appears InPeterson is now a Ph.D. student and a clinical assistant professor in the Mennonite College of Nursing (MCN). She has been researching nurses’ well-being for her dissertation, Exploring Well-Being of Pediatric Nurses who Care for Chronically Ill Patients.
“Emotional health is a really big topic right now. Nurses struggle a lot with burnout, job retention, job satisfaction, and they relate that back to well-being—how they personally feel about themselves and their job. So that’s why this is important in my mind,” Peterson said.
COVID-19 only made work-life worse for nurses. Hospitals downsized during the pandemic and didn’t hire as many nurse aides, leading nurses to juggle more tasks for more patients, Peterson said. “There are a lot more job responsibilities for nurses in today’s world. The pandemic has put a lot on the weight of nurses. The nurse now has to do the role of eight people, whereas they used to just do the role of one.”
“Hopefully, this research will identify well-being for those who care for the chronically ill, and then we can move forward with interventions.”
Kate Peterson
In her dissertation, Peterson explores how the well-being of nurses impacts themselves, clinical outcomes, organizational performance, and patient and family satisfaction. She defines well-being as a nurse’s feelings of joy, life satisfaction, and emotional and mental health.
Caring for chronically ill children presents a unique challenge for nurses since they need more frequent attention and experience higher death rates than other pediatric patients. “These instances of recurrent treatments and mortality may have the ability to influence pediatric nurse well-being by causing increased stress, burnout, and exhaustion in the nursing profession,” Peterson stated in her dissertation proposal.
Peterson is building on research she conducted on nursing faculty with her faculty mentor and dissertation chair, Dr. Cherrill Stockmann. Participants in that study described well-being as a key factor in their decision to remain in a faculty position.
“Their clear ideas of how well-being impacted their faculty indicated the need to understand how it related to pediatric nurses,” said Stockmann, an assistant professor in MCN. “Kate’s research is important because although we know well-being is associated with quality care, research on how pediatric nurses experience well-being while caring for chronically ill children is limited.
“Her research will give us evidence about how these nurses experience well-being and the factors that influence it. Then, we will implement interventions to support their well-being at individual and organizational levels.”
Peterson reviewed the relevant published research ahead of this study. She presented those findings at the University Research Symposium and the Midwest Nursing Research Society.
For her dissertation, Peterson has been conducting a qualitative study that began last fall. She interviewed 10 acute care pediatric nurses at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois, asking them seven open-ended questions related to well-being. To be eligible for the study, participants had to have worked at the hospital for at least three months and cared for a chronically ill child.
The Office of Student Research supported Peterson’s research through its BirdFEEDER (Fund for Experimentation, Enquiry, and the Development of Student Research) program. She used the grant to reward the study participants with a gift card.
Learn more about student research grants by the Office of Student Research.
Peterson has been spending the aand drafting her dissertation. She hopes to publish her research in an academic journal and present her findings to the Society of Pediatric Nurses.
Stockmann said the faculty study she conducted with Peterson prepared her for her dissertation research by teaching her about the entire research process, from design to publication. Peterson said Stockmann has been a great mentor who has guided her throughout this research.
Peterson plans to combine her interest in mental health and her love for pediatric nursing after graduating in May. She also hopes her research will make an impact in the future.
“Someday I’d love to come up with interventions to help with pediatric nurse well-being. Hopefully, this research will identify well-being for those who care for the chronically ill, and then we can move forward with interventions.”
