Abstract

Background

Frustration refers to the emotion experienced in the face of stemmed progress in spite of the best efforts being made and has been defined by Berkowitz (1981:83) as “an unexpected barrier to goal attainment”. The emotion has been identified as destructive to health and productivity in the work place (Maslach, Schaufeli and Leiter, 2001: Lewandowski, 2003; Vansteenkiste and Ryan, 2013), a source of moral distress (Burston and Tuckett ,2012) and a predictor of the intention to leave nursing (Li, Galatsch, Siegrist, Muller and Hasselhorn, 2011)
Aim
The paper aims to examine the sources and dynamics of frustration in nursing practice.
Method
Thirty- three nurses across community, public health, paediatrics, mental health and acute adult surgery talked exhaustively in interview about their experiences of frustration in their professional lives. The data was collected in a London teaching hospital trust and in three community NHS trusts in the East Midlands of England between November 2011 and August 2012. The interviews were audio- taped and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were analysed using Grounded Theory Method.
Results
Frustration was experienced as a toxic force; a ‘time thief’ which defied proactive planning and undermined good practice. Suggestions in the extant literature on the pragmatic management of frustration were seen as unviable in nursing. Sources of frustration included non listening management, colleagues behaving badly and system- reality incompatibility. Frustration exerted a vortex effect on wellbeing featuring workload drift, non reflective behaviour, accelerated exhaustion, working relationship downturn, loss of autonomy, burnout and giving up.
Conclusion
Frustration in is the single most destructive entity in nursing. As a reflection point within a framework for clinical judgment it has potential for identifying hindrances to good practice and development of strategies to address them.