Supporting Nurses Through Critical Practice Incidents: The Nurse Advocate Role

Direct care nurses in tertiary and quaternary healthcare settings face constant workplace stressors as a result of increased patient acuity, rapid change, technological advances, and burgeoning cognitive, physical, psychological, and emotional demands. A variety of options for mitigating nurses' workplace stress are available to nurse leaders (given their availability in the respective setting), including critical incident stress management, therapeutic support groups, employee assistance programs, and psychological debriefing.