Don't let nursing career feel like a laundry list

[awakenthepassion]

If you don't, nursing may feel like a long laundry list of tasks you have complete. With this comes job dissatisfaction and lack of passion for the your profession and most of all your patients.

Whether you are a nurse working in the ER in a metropolitan city or in a outpatient clinic in a rural community, you have your personal reason why you embarked in the journey of being a nurse. It may have been an influential and powerful story about how a nurse empowered you while caring for a sick relative. Or maybe it was to continue on the family generations of nurses.

Whatever the reason may be, prevent your profession from feeling like a laundry list our tasks to complete at the end of your shift to maintain the strength of your commitment and passion for your profession. The solution... focus and remember why you are here and what brought you there.

The one thing that I love most about nursing is challenging lessons it teaches. I feel that nurses hold a gift unlike no other. Nurses pose a tremendous heart and responsibility each time they walk into those doors. As a nurse for so many years, I realized that would walk into patient's rooms as a task.... I need to give this medication because it was ordered, I need to draw the blood sample to get for the doctors. Suddenly nursing became a long chore list of things for me to do.

This is just my feeling, and I could be wrong but if you don't do anything for yourself, to fulfill that internal drive inside you. If you aren't a nurse for a personal gain, then you won't be successful at it. There are nurses out there that have been in this profession for 30 years and others who only last 1-2 years, the main difference between these two groups are the reasons why they entered the profession in the first place.

I am not trying to push people out of the nursing profession; I want to help you analyze the true meaning behind your embracement to this fascinating and rewarding journey. I want to you to be those nurses who really truly last 30 years in a great and empowering profession.

You as a nurse can get caught up into your tasks, that you forget why you wanted to be nurses... it's not like you thought that cleaning an incontinent patient was going to be in the job description. But there is a driving force that gets up and keeps you to put those scrubs on and to provide the best care ever imaginable. I don't suggest you need to remember that your reason for entering nursing every day, but whatever it takes for you to keep up your strength and passion alive. This may not only make you feel better but it might also make your patients feel better taken care of because you are present and completely offering them your true, authentic self.

[cherryames1949]

Sometimes not feeling like a chore girl is difficult. I have been at it for 27 years and I still mostly love my job. I have worked in many settings and have had many different kinds of patients. The best thing, for me, is being able to really make a difference in someone's life. The opportunities arise frequently. You just have to care enough to take the time and sometimes have the courage to advocate for the patient. Sometimes it is just listening and having compassion and empathy. It is never just about medicine and treatments for the truly good nurse.

[agencynurse_rn]

I have avoided the complacency mode, by changing specialty areas and hospitals. I am a lifetime Agency Nurse, but I have worked for several years as an employee of 3 different downtown teaching hospitals. I like moving around form time to time - keeps me on my toes, and tests the brain.

[surferbettycrocker]

its hard work no matter what but i dont agree with the author that if you dont do it for 'the right reasons' you burn out after 2 years but if you stay for 25 years you musta got into the profession for the 'right reasons' thats how i interpreted some of the content.

i think it can go both ways.

for me its the little immediate things in a shift like the elderly person whowas bed ridden for days is now clean up oob to a chair and just looks and feels a little bit better than yesterday.

[suri_wild]

I love the metaphor, and thanks it was a nice pick me up after the bedtime story had me crying like a baby! I can't wait to get back into nursing school now!!

Much love!!!!!

[yan2006]

thanks for the wonderful message!

Eva

[lynx2007]

I'd been in nursing for over 30 years, been in different specialty area . I can look back and most treasure my time in the oncology unit,where if nursing is deep in your heart and soul, that is a place where u can actually give it all out and not feel that its only a laundry list of task. Now I work in a critical care, and its almost hard sometimes to balance the list of task, the hurriedness and the stats. Its almost impossible sometimes to fully expand your time for everyone. I feel like the moment I walk in the unit, I already have a long list of task to do so if I made it through the day and the patient survives inspite of the odds, I have done the duty I was placed there to do. Theres a lot of difficult task that we are expected to do as a nurse and I bow my head for everyone in these profession..