Nursekim82

Hi...I'm a baby hospice nurse (I've only been doing it a little over a year,) and although certainly there are aspects to hospice nursing I love with all my heart, sometimes, dealing with the grief and trauma of certain deaths seems to take a toll on me. Sometimes I can't sleep for days. You get to know people and their families very well sometimes, and when certain people pass...it really hurts. I was drinking a lot to "drown my sorrows," but I'm realizing that obviously that is not the healthiest solution to dealing with the stress of hospice nursing. I want to make a career out of healthcare and I don't want to end up an addict in the meantime. Family and friends, although they mean well, can't or won't talk with me about some of the things I see..I have no one to vent to! Lots of people tell me "I don't want to talk about your job...it's too much for me.." I get that, hospice is very heavy emotional work. So how do the rest of you deal with the heavy emotional stress that comes along with hospice nursing? Who do you vent to? Are there support groups, online or in the real world, just for this sort of thing? I know there are grief support groups, but it doesn't seem appropriate for a hospice nurse to go to those.