Handling stress concerns

[rre714]

I am a first year nurisng student. I have been at clinical and I have a hard time leaving my worries and concerns about the patients at the hospital. I know sometimes you still worry about certain patients while you are at home. How do you deal with this? How do you deal with stress and leave stress at work?

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

rre714, you will no doubt obtain good feedback in this forum. However, I would also like you to post an introduction of yourself in the Introductions and Greetings forum so that members may greet you properly there.

Thank you,

Wolfie

[Nurse_Smith]

Welcome to the site and to nursing. You will learn to distance yourself from the majority of your pts with time, experience, and confidence in yourself and your skills. In time you will learn to trust yourself and your coworkers that the pt will have the best outcome, and that when they dont , you did everything you could. Plan on fealing this way for a couple of years.

p.s. This fealing will serve to remind you that you are not Burned Out.

Good Luck

[challenged annie]

It is really tricky as your human and some situations will make you cry or get upset but thats part of our job. We have the privalege to get to meet all kinds of people who will let us into our lives. One warning thought some situations never get any easier. But treat the job as a job and just enjoy it.

[nurse_clown]

sometimes i leave work feeling stunned. i'm walking down the hallway on my way to the car, my hair is in disarray, my uniform dishevelled... i'm worried about my patients and coworkers (our hospital is going through some changes :uhoh21: ) and i didn't get a break!!!

but you know, some things are just out of my control. the things that stress me out at work are: computer glitches, angry stressed out coworkers, discouraging interoffice email, an increase in workload acuity and working short staffed on a regular basis. i try and look at every downfall at work as a challenge or an obstacle to overcome. i look at the rn's that can handle anything and complain about nothing as a nurse i'd like to be like one day. when i leave work all stunned and dishevelled, i vow that the next time i go through those doors, it'll be much better.

then i go home and have a bath, a good breakfast (i work the night shift) and sleep. i usually forget about the stresses when i wake up. i used to go to bed worrying if the phone was going to wake me up because it's work calling because i've made a serious error!!!! but it's never happened. i've been an oncology/palliative care nurse working part time on the night shift for three years. i've also been working part time night shift at a long term care nursing home for a little more than a year. just last week, i realized that i'm not so scared about work so much anymore :rotfl: trust me. if you work hard and strive to do better, dealing with work stress does get easier.

also, since i'm still considered a "junior" nurse by my coworkers, i still take liberties by asking them a lot of questions. i wander into my managers office to let her know how i'm doing. i ask my charge nurse how i can organize my time better. i guess we're always learning. then, work just becomes a small but important part of life. i enjoy my days off to spend time with my hubby, the kids and my puppy (whom i'm trying to train to be a therapy dog). i enjoy going to work and can't decide which job i like better.

anyway, i'm rambeling. but i can't say enough times that it'll get easier. i think it's experience.