Feeling Guilty About Nurse Burn Out

[PurplePens, RN]

I wasn’t a nurse long before the pandemic started, but even in the beginning of Covid, I still loved nursing. I enjoyed work, co workers, and patients. These last couple months staffing went out the window for my shift (nights). Our experienced nurses quit. At one point I had 9 patients, 3 total cares, and surrounded by new grads as charge nurse and clerk on a full med surge floor. I have went PRN since because of it. The night was horrific, and from what I’ve heard from full time employees it’s worse. 

I have not scheduled myself for October yet, but I’ve already told my manager that I can’t come to work until next week. It will make my second week off. I'm beyond frazzled from work, and I feel guilty taking this break. 

My question is how do you come back from burn out? I truly do enjoy my job. They say every hospital is like ours right now, and that makes me feel guilty for feeling this way. But our ratios have been 7:1 and two to five total cares per nurse if we are lucky to have an aid. More often than not, I am also charge nurse and clerk. I feel pushed to my limit right now and need a break. 

[JKL33]

2 hours ago, PurplePens said:

Im beyond frazzled from work, and I feel guilty taking this break. 

You need to think this through while you're taking your break.

It's hard to understand how guilt comes into play here.

If you can swing it just work the bare minimum required from per diems for how ever long it takes to catch a breather. And if that isn't enough (e.g. if you're getting too beat up on the shifts you do work even though you are working fewer of them) you'll need to consider other arrangements.

The other thing is that having a full assignment and being responsible for charge and clerical duties is just a no. Just tell them you won't do it. Let the phone ring. Don't do the extraneous paperwork or call-backs or whatever else they want done. In my book if the charge nurse has an assignment they should prioritize taking care of the patients in that assignment. Second priority is helping others with their patients. Last priority is everything else, such as making assignments before the next shift shows up. Filing this here and that there and checking xyz boxes and answering the phone >>> won't make it onto the priority list.

[OUxPhys, BSN, RN]

On 10/5/2021 at 6:23 PM, JKL33 said:

You need to think this through while you're taking your break.

It's hard to understand how guilt comes into play here.

If you can swing it just work the bare minimum required from per diems for how ever long it takes to catch a breather. And if that isn't enough (e.g. if you're getting too beat up on the shifts you do work even though you are working fewer of them) you'll need to consider other arrangements.

The other thing is that having a full assignment and being responsible for charge and clerical duties is just a no. Just tell them you won't do it. Let the phone ring. Don't do the extraneous paperwork or call-backs or whatever else they want done. In my book if the charge nurse has an assignment they should prioritize taking care of the patients in that assignment. Second priority is helping others with their patients. Last priority is everything else, such as making assignments before the next shift shows up. Filing this here and that there and checking xyz boxes and answering the phone >>> won't make it onto the priority list.

If they want phone calls answered and whatnot then they should staff the people to do that. It is not our job to play secretary on top of the other jobs we are doing. 

[LibraNurse27, BSN, RN]

2 hours ago, OUxPhys said:

If they want phone calls answered and whatnot then they should staff the people to do that. It is not our job to play secretary on top of the other jobs we are doing. 

Exactly. We were expected to do the clerk's job on weekends when we already had bare minimum staff, and some phone calls can take a lot of time away from patient care. It felt terrible but we had to learn to just let the phone ring unless someone had paged and waiting for a call back. Management got complaints from family members calling for updates, the supervisors, etc, but it was a triage situation. When it's already almost impossible to give your patients safe care, it's not ideal but some things have to be cut.

[amoLucia]

7 hours ago, OUxPhys said:

If they want phone calls answered and whatnot then they should staff the people to do that. It is not our job to play secretary on top of the other jobs we are doing. 

bolding mine

I believe it's called 'other duties as assigned'.

[Emergent, RN]

I advise you to train for a different line of work. I chose to get out of nursing since I'm so close to full retirement age. I got a job at a farm store, and I am learning to be a cashier. It's a new line of work for me and those cash register machines are very fancy these days. If I were younger I would get into something that more but I'm fairly set financially, so this is a semi-retirement type job.