I know how you feel

bbnurse · Oct 6, 2002

Tough one to follow, but the easy answer is just go home. 90% of the work will wait.

Delegate more. Find a good mentee and involve them.

Say "no" to additional projects.

No one is indispensible at work, they can always hire someone else who has blinders as to the amount of work involved. Your family can't hire someone else and are too soon grown.

Help the staff to work on their needs themselves. Don't always "mother them" or enable them. They have great ideas and creative solutions. Trust them to solve what they can.

Let go of the details that are really not important to anyone else.

Not letting standards drop, but those minute details that don't matter as to quality.

Most of all, Let some projects wait. Analyze what MUST be done to help the staff's overwhelming needs become less a problem. Look for a long term solution and the short term goals to meet it.

Using the nursing process, find the root cause of what must be done to resolve these issues and work on them first. Prioritize the steps to completion, a time line so to speak.

I'm sure you've tried to be all things to all people. It does not work. Relax enough to look hard at your time management. Make plans to avoid the crises that keep you running every day, putting out fires. Plan some Fire Prevention and you'll spend less time running from fire to fire eventually. Set your unit vision and enlist the staff's help to meet it.

Be fair to yourself and go home!

I know this is jumbled but I struggle with this too. It is actually better now than it was 4 yrs. ago. But I still find I want the control and get impatient when the delegated work is not done yet....I get worried. I have to tell myself that being dedicated to the staff and hospital is great but my family loves and needs me at home too. I have to make myself turn off the light and leave.

Your health and happiness depends on the simple act of doing that. Do it for you. Go home when the time is up(when possible). The papers don't do themselves.....

Good Luck. I know the problem

Orca, ADN, ASN, RN · Oct 10, 2002

Delegate what you can to subordinate supervisors. It will take work off you, and aid them in professional growth. I have seen many managers work themselves into the ground (and burnout) because they felt the need to control everything, and felt that they could not leave until the last thing was done. Trust those who work for you. They know their jobs.

Examine whether policies, either your own or the hospital's, are causing your staff to call upon you more than they reasonably should. If they are adequately trained, there is no reason they cannot make most decisions without calling you. In eight years of nursing, I have probably called my nurse manager at home five or six times.

Your job is not your life. The sun will still rise in the morning if every single piece of paper on your desk is not processed by the time you go home. Take some time for yourself and your family. If you do not, you will suffer both personally and professionally for it.