Managing your own anxiety in a stressful situation

[anon456, BSN, RN]

I am struggling with this. I am getting some counseling, and I am told by other RNs in my area that my feelings are normal at this stage of training, but I would like to get some tips from ICU nurses. I started in PICU, only stayed a few months, went to step-down (which I loved) and now being put back in PICU. The assignments are appropriate for my level of training, but there is a lot of heavy stuff happening around me on the unit and I feel anxiety creeping up, which makes for a very stressful shift. If I am tense or anxious I am not as able to absorb information and learn.

I am good with the kind of stress that comes from doing many tasks on a busy patient. However I am still working on managing the emotional stress of dealing with very sick, injured, and in some cases, dying patients in the rooms nearby and the reactions of their grieving families.

Normally anxiety is managed with taking a few minutes to be quiet, breathe, meditate, etc, but when you are faced with a busy, busy patient, it's hard enough to step away to get a bite to eat or go to the bathroom, much less have time to do some deep breathing in a quiet place. What are some ways to calm down and let go of anxiety/stress while still on the go? What kind of self talk or quick mental things do you all do to be able to focus on the tasks and put your feelings aside of the gravity of the things going on around you?

[danceyrun]

I'm struggling with similar feelings, as a new grad in heme/onc/BMT. Our patients are there for a long time (as I'm sure many of yours are) which makes dealing with suffering even harder. I'm hoping that others with more experience have more and better advice but my first piece is to make sure you don't move too quickly that you are going to make a mistake. It's easy at this stage to feel so overwhelmed that you need to rugs but don't. Looking forward to hearing what others have to say.

[Biffbradford]

There will be times when you can not walk away from the situation (not just nursing either, think about fire fighters, police, soldiers, surgeons), but there are times when the work flow slows for just a moment, and that's when you take a deep breath. Grab a sip of water. Glance out the window, is it light out yet? Joke with a colleague briefly. I always made it a point before going home after a shift like that, to go for a short walk, stop at the store, do SOMETHING to put one step in between work and home to help me decompress from those stresses. Otherwise if you go straight home, that's still the first thing in the back of your mind. But if you take a long walk to your car, you might see a mother duck and some ducklings swimming in the creek, or just breathe in some fresh cold air, to help you get through it.