Over using sympathy card

Davey Do · Jan 29, 2019

32 minutes ago, Emergent said:
How long should the team pick up the slack or continue to be understanding of subpar work?
Thoughts?

Yeah, Emergent, it's sort of like titrating pain pills in that we want to make the individual more comfortable, but we don't want them to become complacent and not deal with their pain in other therapeutic ways.

The vast majority of my coworkers have bounced back from significant losses to the point that I admire them to the Nth degree. For example a very loving and excellent LPN I work with lost her son as an innocent bystander in a drive-by shooting. She took her bereavement time, appropriately grieved, and persevered.

God, I admire her.

On the other hand, I was going through a divorce, working and going through the RN program full time, and was zombie-like. During one of my zombie-like trances, a coworker whom I dearly respected kicked me in the pants and said "Buck up!"

My coworkers were empathetic but didn't feed the victim thing.

I don't know any constant for this variable. Everybody grieves in their own way for as long as they allow themselves.

Another interesting topic, Emergent!

llg, PhD, RN · Jan 29, 2019

Yes, it is an interesting topic. On one hand, it is not fair to expect everyone to respond the same way to life's travails. On the other hand, it is not fair for the suffering person to simply count on his/her coworkers to pick up the extra work indefinitely and bear a burden that they cannot handle.

To me, a big factor is whether the individual is being honest with themselves, their boss, and their co-workers -- and whether they are trying to seek help to assist them to get back on their feet. If someone is saying, "Friends, I am having trouble with this and I need a little more help than usual" and is seeing a counselor, etc. I am going to be far more supportive. If I feel someone is taking advantage of their co-workers kindness and not even trying to cope and/or "get better" or whatever ... then I start to feel resentful. At some point, if you can't do your job, you need to step aside so that someone else can.

If you are going to take on the "sick role" within your social group, then you have to fulfill the responsibilities of the sick person by acknowledging the help you are receiving from others and by making a sincere effort to "get better."

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jan 29, 2019

2 hours ago, Emergent said:
I'm wondering, have you all run into coworkers who appear to be overextending the grace period after a personal loss or life struggle? How long should the team pick up the slack or continue to be understanding of subpar work?
You don't want to be heartless, but I do feel there should be a time limit. We all have our struggles and losses, they are part of life.
I feel as if our modern society, in general, doesn't have the healthy rituals that helped our ancestors cope with the far more frequent losses that they had to bear.
Thoughts?

Excellent question. I have a friend who experienced the loss of a partner five years ago, and she is still grieving too much to keep a job (or get another), manage her home without help, manage her own health, or maintain healthy friendships. By that, I mean she's always asking for help or sympathy, even from friends who are navigating through current struggles: the friend who must institutionalize his mother, the friend who has cancer, the friend whose partner has a terminal illness, the friend who is struggling with her partner's traumatic brain injury and the help he now requires, the friend who just left an abusive marriage. I know there's no time limit on grief, and everyone grieves differently and in there own time, but after five years, it seems that she would be able to GIVE to her friends rather than just taking.

I'm not even sure how to tell when someone has been taking too much or too long or how to call them on it. I just know that for certain coworkers (and friends), their minor tragedy (kid broke his arm, but is going to be fine) is always more important that someone else's major loss (divorce, terminal illness of a partner, own cancer diagnosis, death in the family, etc.).

My own personal boundary is that I'm not tolerating your subpar work or efforts to get me to pick up the slack because you experienced your minor tragedy when I or a family member has just been handed a cancer diagnosis or another major loss. Perhaps you genuinely see your kid's broken arm as a bigger deal than my cancer diagnosis, but perhaps you need an attitude adjustment.

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Jan 29, 2019

Grief is a funny thing. It comes and goes in waves, for months or years. You can be going along just fine for awhile, and then it hits you again like a ton of bricks. It is said that it takes roughly three years after a profound loss for life to get back to normal, whatever that is. In the meantime, one has to work and carry on no matter how they feel, and that is hard.

Our fast-paced society expects people to put away their grief too soon, which creates all sorts of problems, not only for the person mourning a loss but for the people around them, including co-workers. I can't even imagine how difficult it must be for all concerned; thankfully I didn't have to work after losing my husband to pancreatic cancer. I'm just saying that people grieve in different ways and for different periods of time, and we should be at least somewhat understanding of the process even though it may inconvenience us for a time. But it's also understandable that co-workers shouldn't have to take up the slack for three years!

I don't know what the answer is; maybe there isn't one. I only know that people do better with emotional support in the early mourning period, and they shouldn't be expected to be up to par within days or weeks of a loss. Sometimes it's best to take a sabbatical or at least a couple of weeks of vacation time if one can afford to. JMHO.

HarleyvQuinn, MSN, RN, NP · Jan 31, 2019

I don't have a real answer for you. I agree with others that we know that grief is a process that is very individualized and we all know that traumatic losses can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, which can pose further problems.

What I can say is, it's probably best not to 'call out' your coworkers on how it's over and they need to just get back to getting work done and business as usual less than 24 hours after the funeral.

Not that doing so could possibly cause issues or anything. ?

Career Columnist / Author · Feb 1, 2019

That's a good question, but like DaveyDoo, I haven't seen it in nursing. I've seen the opposite, such as the ICU nurse who lost her twin teenage boys in an accident. She took time off from work, and the first time I saw her afterwards, we rode up in the elevator together. I was amazed at her peace and composure. And courage.

But ALL of us suffer losses, because life happens to everyone. Divorce, heartbreak, wayward children, illness, sick parents...and we show up at work through it all. I compartmentalize at those times, and usually focusing on work and patients helped me get through the shift.

pixierose, BSN, RN · Feb 1, 2019

So many good points: we don’t have the “healthy rituals” that helped our ancestors cope, but like Viva stated so beautifully in her post our fast paced society expects people to hide away our grief too soon.

I feel like we can often be alone in our grief, especially when it hits us so suddenly 6 months away the event, or two years. Or 5.

I have actually seen the reverse in nursing, where coworkers have come back from their grief so gracefully that I am almost moved to tears. With myself, I’ve used work as an escape from grief.

I think if someone is truly “slacking” 3-5 years after the fact, something else may be going on. This could be a personality trait that has always been inherent, grief or not. But I haven’t experienced such devastating loss and am unwilling to pass judgment.

Daisy Joyce · Feb 1, 2019

My feeling is this.

I have my assignment, you have yours. If my assignment is done and I have time left over, I will help you with yours. If I had a day where the spit hit the fan on my assignment, I have to care for my own patients first, whether or not you’re going through grief. (If it was one of those train-wreck days and I know your workload wound up really worse than mine, I’ll stay late to work alongside you to get it done. It happens ?)

It also depends on how good a worker the person was before the tragedy. If they were always lazy, I’m less inclined to give help than to a responsible coworker going through a rough patch.

Its not that I don’t care, but at work, I don’t come first and you don’t come first. The patients come first.

thoughtful21, BSN, RN · Feb 3, 2019

This topic made me think a lot.

Perhaps in our society people tend to be self-centered. Our own struggle is bigger and more real to us than anyone else's. It is easy for us to lose perspective, to lose sight of the struggles that other people are going through.

I've been as guilty of this as anyone! It has been hard at times to have enough extra energy to empathize with others.

I've also been on the receiving end. A close family friend is very caught up in the throes of caring for their first child, who has had a few health problems, but is doing very well overall. We have really tried to be there to support them. They didn't even take the time to send a card (or acknowledge it in any way) when my grandma died. TBH, this friend didn't offer support when my husband's parent's died years ago, either. So overall this is just the way they are I think -- self-centered. They frequently describe all the struggles they've had in great, colorful detail and say that no one else could understand what they’re going through. Which is true to an extent… but compare the story that @Nurse Beth shared. From my nursing standpoint, they don't have good coping skills or perspective. They expect a lot of sympathy and support, but give none in return. Perhaps I should reconsider their status as a close family friend, hmm?

It is not my business to judge someone else's grief/struggle. I try to be empathetic, kind, and supportive. But when they don't give support back, and they take more than they give, and they always want recognition for how much they are suffering...it's hard. I dunno. Maybe I'm the bad guy here. But they're not the only ones who have ever been through something like that, and everyone has struggles of our own.

Perhaps it is a matter of perspective(s).

@Davey Do has a good point when he says that a victim mentality is not good/helpful.

Thank you! Good topic!

kbrn2002, ADN, RN · Feb 3, 2019

A difficult and thought provoking question to be sure. While it's not grieving a loss, a CNA co-worker has been going through a rough patch with depression. She calls out frequently and when she is able to physically make it to work she's certainly not at her best. Her co-workers have been picking up a lot of slack and they are starting to complain. Hard to blame them when there are only 2 CNA's for 22 residents and one of them is carrying by far the heavier burden. Nobody wants to bring it up though for fear of making her depression even worse, the poor lady is obviously in a fragile state. This has been going on for a good couple of months and everybody has been supportive so far, but how much longer will her partner CNA keep taking on the majority of her work without getting upset enough to say something? It's getting pretty close to the point where the aid that works with her most is going to tell her to step it up some or just take time off if she can't work at her best.

Editorial Team / Moderator · Feb 3, 2019

I know people who endured Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath in 2005, and I don't know if they will ever recover from it. Some things are just so all-encompassing and tragic. When your self-view goes from "I am Lisa" to "I am Lisa and this bad thing happened to me," it's hard to disentangle it. Pretty sure professional help is needed at that point. I admire people who have lost everything and still manage to get out of bed each day, and thrive, and go on. I suspect that is part of the recovery.