Burnout sets in... When, usually?

Ruby Vee, BSN · Aug 7, 2016

I'm asking because I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing "nurse burnout". It feels this way, because I'm feeling over all of the motions--- tired of the theatrical feelings put upon me, like everything is everything, all of the time.
Patients come in to our ER acting dramatic and rude a lot of the time, regarding things like 'it burns when I pee, so I can't give a urine sample, duh. It hurts too bad.' (yes, explanations regarding the importance/rationale of the sample were given) or a 30 yo says 'I'm having the worst chest pain'--- gets morphine and the whole work up then immediately demands to eat potato chips.
Even in other acute care or Ltc settings, I'm just tired of family members acting like jerks. I'm not saying all or even most are like this, but I'm just so tired of being treated like a second class citizen by docs, families, patients, midlevels, etc, etc...
I've only been a nurse for a few years. So could it be burnout already, or just a bad career fit for me?

Did venting about your rude, dramatic patients help any? Sometimes it's just a bad day or a bad week, and writing a scathing post about it on the ER forum and getting a few pages of witty responses will make you feel enormously better. I'm not sure that constitutes burnout. It does, however, constitute hours of entertainment for ICU nurses like me who read the ER forum because you guys are funnier.

Burnout, I think, is individual. I've seen some new grads with burnout before they're even off orientation, but that's by far the exception rather than the norm. There are dozens of good threads about nurse burnout on AN -- I've even started some of them. There are threads about preventing it, recognizing it, and what to do when you have it.

I've been a victim of burnout more than once in my career. Sometimes, all you need is a nice vacation and some self care. If you recognize it early enough, that might be enough. Sometimes you need to just change shifts, or change jobs within your organization. That may mean a change in specialty which is in and of itself a great antidote to burnout. Maybe you need to change organizations within your specialty. If you love ER, for example, but aren't feeling challenged enough in your suburban ER, maybe you're ready for the inner city ER. Or vice versa. Once I had a temper tantrum and quit my job without having another lined up, sold my house and moved to the opposite coast. I'll not recommend that as a strategy in career advancement, but it did wonders for my burnout!

Good luck!