Is nursing killing you or making you stronger? Three ways beyond the love hate relationship with nursing. The love hate relationship with nursing is something most nurses come up against at some point in their career. This is a point of no return because either you get through it and move on or it takes you down. This article takes you through the dilemma and offers 3 suggestions.
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These comments are from the same nurse just days apart.
"I came home and could not wait to tell my roommate about the day I had. The doctors took my suggestions and my patient got better!"
"I could not wait to go home and crawl under the covers. I cannot stand my job. What am I doing in nursing?"
Do you struggle with this love hate conflict as a nurse?
In this article I want to talk about this very common dilemma and offer a few suggestions to go beyond it. Stacey (not her real name) is very proud to be a nurse and for the most part loves what she does. She knows she is helping people and making a difference in their life. She enjoys the intimacy she has with patients and families and the trust they have in her to help them during the toughest times in their life. And at the same time, she worries frequently she will make a mistake or miss a medication or a warning sign and things could go bad for the patient. Caught in this space of loving her role as a nurse and the reality of having this responsibility, Stacey struggles to find balance.
At work, she enjoys her coworkers although is frustrated with many of the policies that come down from above. She often feels lost in all the demands and doesn't understand the constant urgency that goes along with these demands. "If only they would talk to us so we can understand what they really want."
A nurse by the very nature of the role solves problems. Working independently yet as part of a team, a nurse has to find a happy medium between being the one to take care of it and the one to communicate the need to the doctor or manager or administrator. Nursing is more than a job and for most nurses, it is an identity. Stacey represents many of the nurses I have mentored over the years and reflects the conflicts and emotional dilemmas that are so typical.
Nurses are constantly observing, doing, managing for everyone else that tuning in to one's personal needs is tough. So when disillusionment creeps in it can catch a nurse by surprise. Nursing as a calling is glamorous when you think about holding the dying patient's hand or saving the patient from death by initiating a code. Nursing as a job is anything but glamorous.
All the talent in the world doesn't protect you from humiliation from coworkers, violence from patients or the degrading feeling of being overlooked by management because the focus is on the new building campaign and not the hard work at the bedside. Gallows humor can save you from this reality and over time it can also harden your heart so that nothing gets in!
When the reality of nursing comes up against the calling of nursing, feelings of insecurity can creep in as nurses wonder, what was I thinking? Stacey wonders about this and goes to work looking for ways to be validated. She asks herself, "Do I try harder or stop trying?" At some point we all face this question because life is unpredictable and by itself a challenge. One way to build resilience to be able to keep going is to clarify your goals. What do you really want your life to look like?
If you always wanted to be a nurse, what does that mean today? A 6 year old and a twenty five year old have a different vision of what it means to help someone. What is meaningful to you today?
Nursing has many ways to "be" a nurse and this may be the time for a career move.
Another way to build resilience is to work on your attitude. If you have become sarcastic in order to get through the day without being disappointed, you are missing out on simple pleasures that escape your cynicism. Shutting down actually increases burnout rather than protects you from it. By tuning into what you really need and setting up a plan to get those needs met you empower yourself and build confidence. Confidence means "with faith."
Faith is the third way you can move beyond the gap between expectations and reality. If you stay focused on the gap and what you and not getting you begin to expect to be disappointed. Faith in something bigger than yourself, God, means you are destined for something better. Faith in God, exercising prayer and remembering that God today is the same God as yesterday helps you to recognize that what you may be going through is temporary and the bigger vision for yourself is possible. Just do not quit.
