Stress in Nursing

Nurses General Nursing

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Hi everyone....I am doing a powerpoint on Nursing Stress today and would love to open this website in class. I would like to take an informal poll on what you think causes the most stress in your work environment and what nursing specialties you think generate the most stress. Thanks....

I work in drug and vaccine research, not doing conventional patient care, so I have some "different" stressors (that when examined, are not that different).

My biggest stress comes from having managers that assign tasks without checking for proper staffing. Case in point- I'm involved in a phase 1 clinical trial of a nasal vaccine for RSV/PIV3. Research demands a lot of paperwork and redundancy (thank you, FDA) and a simple nasal wash/nasal swab visit may take 5 minutes for the patient and 45 minutes for me. The manager who signed the contract for the study didn't check staffing patterns and as a result I had to work at 3 sites to do the study (instead of one), drive over 800 miles in the last 3 weeks to cover the sites, and the manager herself was not available (she was on vacation part of the time and at investigator meetings the rest of the time).

Another stressor is doing non-nursing tasks. I am expected to act as a go-between for doctors in site offices and the doctors/managers at the research firm. For example- in order for Drug Rep A to talk to Dr. K, the drug rep called my manager, the manager called me, I called the Dr. K's practice manager, who looked at Dr. K's schedule and gave me 3 dates. I called my manager, who called Rep A, who chose a date, called the manager, who called me, and I called the practice manager to confirm. Wouldn't it have been easier for Drug Rep A to call the practice manager or Dr. K? Other non-nursing tasks are clerical, usually paperwork related.

So, at bottom, my stressors are an out-of-touch management and being tied up with non-nursing tasks; just like nurses who work in hospitals.

Donna

Getting up at 1:45 a.m. to get ready to be at work at 2:45 a.m. for a 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift . . . . :rolleyes:

steph

Good grief Steph.......who'd you piss off to get THAT shift ? :chuckle

Z

Specializes in RN, BSN, CHDN.

Here in Uk same stress factors that affect you in US

Not enought staff

Unrealistic expectations from pts, staff and management

Not enought time

Heavy workload

and on and on and on :uhoh3:

Good grief Steph.......who'd you piss off to get THAT shift ? :chuckle

Z

:rotfl:

Actually, it was thought up by a nurse. I work in a rural area in a small hospital where nurses are hard to find and the hospital is sort of over a barrel. NO ONE wanted to work a true pm shift like 7 pm to 7 am .. . .so she offered up a compromise. Both shifts had to work part of the pm shift. PM's come on at 3 pm and leave at 3 am and then we day shift folks work 3 am to 3 pm. The DON gave us all a choice a few years ago to change it and go back to traditional 7-7 shifts but no one wanted to.

Although I wrote on my ballot "I want to work 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and get paid for 12 hours". :rolleyes:

The good part for me is that I'm home when my kids get home from school . .. I'm exhausted but I'm home. And I work part-time now after having a baby almost 4 years ago. I went back to work part-time when he was 4 months old - my husband drives a logging truck and leaves at 4 a.m. so he would take our son out to his parent's ranch and tuck him into bed with them at 3:30 a.m. My son still goes out there but now we just wake up our 15 year old daughter who gets into our bed with him and then my father-in-law comes in at 7 a.m. to get him before our daughter leaves for school. (yeah, we are co-sleepers). :)

We are lucky to have my inlaws . . .I stayed home full time with my older kids before I was a nurse and I told my husband that I would NOT put our last little surprise child in daycare and I would not EVER work full-time again. :)

Part-time makes it a more doable shift for me . . .but I do remember those 100 hour pay periods and shake my head at myself, wondering how I did it.

steph

hi everyone....i am doing a powerpoint on nursing stress today and would love to open this website in class. i would like to take an informal poll on what you think causes the most stress in your work environment and what nursing specialties you think generate the most stress. thanks....

i'm in the emergency department and what causes me the greatest stress is when people treat the ed as a clinic and then complain about the wait. and they don't complain quietly...they're in your face, at the desk. in fact, just the other night we had to call security to the ed because a patient with a toothache was tired of waiting, screamed in the hallway that "no one cared about her" and then proceeded to pound the walls with her fists. i mean, if you can carry on like that, how sick can you be? anyway, not the point of my post. we have to deal with stuff like that, then in our monthly staff meetings we get told that "patient satisfaction is down and we need you to do something about it."

that's what causes me the greatest stress at my job. bring on the dead, the dying, the bloody and the mangled...i'm calm and composed. put a patient with a toothache in my room who starts beating on the walls...well, i start wanting to rip out vital organs. :angryfire

nursing=stress. why do you think they teach us body mechanics, stress management, and all those nursing ethics but for our own survival? :deadhorse

Hi everyone....I am doing a powerpoint on Nursing Stress today and would love to open this website in class. I would like to take an informal poll on what you think causes the most stress in your work environment and what nursing specialties you think generate the most stress. Thanks....

Hi! For me it has been the unreasonable expectations I have placed upon myself that have caused the stress, every situation is potentially stressful. For me it is a culture of blame and shame in the past that has generated the most stress, thankfully I can contrast that against my current environment where I feel supported and valued. When I feel stressed now I tend to look inside to figure a way out. Generally it is because the standards of care I am able to deliver donot meet with my expectations of myself and its usually due to time constraints.

Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho.

Again, staff/patient ratios are the biggie. I have learned that to keep myself from getting to stressed i HAVE to take one step at a time. When people are throwing several different things at me at one time. I have to prioritize and remind myself i can only be one place and do one thing at a time. I have to save my own life (stress kills) in order to save others and thats the only way to do it.

I have read the posts related to nursing stress, and agree with all of them. However, now there is an added stressor to this mix. Previously, I worked at an outpatient facility, and the majority of the patients were illegal immigrants from Mexico. I know for certain that these patients use the local ED's as primary care facilities. I was a triage nurse at this particular place, and had to screen these clients before allowing them to be seen in clinic. The problems occured when I would give homecare advice rather than sending them to clinic. A large number of workers were also Mexican, and the patients would go to them and they would bypass the triage process and get them into the clinic. I got no support from the physicians, and felt greatly outnumbered. Consequently, I left because I was not able to do my job. It became even more frustrating when I would admit a client into the clinic, and they would return the next day because, "the medicine did not work", which was usually an antibiotic. I would tell them to give the medicine at least 48 hours before deciding that it was not working, but they would find a way to be seen anyway, and I would be reprimanded because I did not let the patient in. The waiting room would be filled with patients wanting to be seen, and every member of their families who came to accompany them. I would leave this place physically and mentally exhausted everyday. That was stress!!

Hi everyone....I am doing a powerpoint on Nursing Stress today and would love to open this website in class. I would like to take an informal poll on what you think causes the most stress in your work environment and what nursing specialties you think generate the most stress. Thanks....

and how do you treat with the stress ?

and how do you treat with the stress ?

I finally had to remove myself from the situation, especially, since I was not

able to change the situation, and was not supported. Removing myself from the situation allowed me to take a better look at it, and make better choices in my next job. I was able to find a job that gives me great satisfaction, much less stressful, and very productive. The problems on the other job was never going to go away. I am confident that I made the right decision for myself.

I guess it's the whole "All things to all people" theory...sometimes I feel like we are expected to be machines..with Energizer Bunny batteries in place..work your butt off, don't make any mistakes, always smile and be polite even when you are being chewed out/dumped on by pts,families, MD's, other depts, you name it..it's like we are supposed to be Super Human! Then you have this thing called a "life" outside nursing..guess what? there we have stressors as well...some days ALL of it is easier to deal with than others....so how do we deal with it?? we all do the best we can and take it day by day..everyone is different and handles things in his/her own way. Still looking for solutions myself .

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