I frequently get asked this question by family/ friends after work. How do you guys answer this question? Do you talk about your day, with respect to Hipaa of course, the ups and downs? Or do you simply answer something to the likes of "Oh it was fine" or "It was good" and not get into it.
I find myself doing the latter. To non-nursing family/ friends who ask this question, I find it hard to talk about the realities of my job, I work with the critically ill, so it's not exactly light stuff to talk about. And most of the time I think they are just asking casually out of being polite, not that they really care how my shift went.
So to spare them (and myself from reliving the emotional/ moral distress) I usually just end up just saying "It was good." Even though many times it was not good. How could it be 'good' when your patient is near death or died. Or just found out they have cancer or that they overdosed on drugs...It's not stuff people are necessarily prepared to talk about/ hear.
So I settle for the very vague "it was good" or "i was busy, but it was fine" meanwhile my heart is in a knot about the truth of how my shift really went. It's hard not talking about it and holding it in sometimes.
So I would like to hear from all my fellow nurses out there how they deal with this question.
I disagree with people that say people don't care. I always have in my head that when I ask the question that someone will talk about in anywhere for 2 seconds to 3 minutes. However, I generally avoid asking people "how are you?" I lack enough time and patience to listen to them.
I have learned that some people value good listeners.
How I respond depends on who's doing the asking, how I'm feeling at the moment, and... how my day was.
I don't feel the need to hide what I'm feeling or what I've experienced. If it really sucked because we lost a kid after coding him for 40 minutes then I reply honestly.
I think it's important to be open and honest about what we go through. To keep it inside is to seek isolation which fosters burnout.
I'm lucky my significant other is a LEO -- I feel like sometimes cops are the only people who understand nurses (sometimes). I can usually tell her everything that went on in my day without feeling like I'm dropping a bomb on her. She's a fantastic sounding board and she often has insight and asks questions that help me reframe my day and see what lessons can be learned in the aftermath. I do the same for her. Sometimes, though, neither of us want to talk. Months after something happens I find myself talking about it to her not realizing I had never mentioned it -- she does the same.
What I'm saying is, it seems you need someone who understands where you're coming from to vent with. It's completely natural and normal and a necessary part of doing this job.
For everyone else, I just tell them I was busy but had fun or learned something fascinating. Or not, depends on what happened.
I do ask this to people sometimes, and I do care about that person's day. I do not, however, need all the details. I'm looking for "good," "not bad," "busy," etc. I do not want a blow by blow account of everything that made it a bad/busy/annoying day. Besides, I just asked "how was your day?" not "tell me everything that happened today, in 10 minute increments, using as many descriptive adjectives as possible."
When someone asks me about my day, I will respond briefly, but I don't care to go beyond that and relive all 12 hours of my day. Unless they are a nurse, I doubt he/she would understand the stressor anyway. If that person is a nurse, I'm guessing that don't need to hear about my bad day when they probably had one of their own recently.
The CEO asked me how our day was going on the unit. Instead of saying the politically correct, "Fine." Or "Great." (I'm not very politically savvy!). I thought she really wanted to know. It was one of those really horrible days. We were short staffed. There had been one issue after another all day. And while our oncology coordinator was amazing, our unit manager who saw to the day to day running of the unit, wasn't worth 2 cents. (She was eventually fired but that's a whole other story.) I didn't elaborate on any of that, I simply said (with a smile), "It's been a bit of a rough day, but we are getting through it." She (the CEO) thanked me for my honesty, asked me a few questions, then I excused myself to go take care of one of the many pending issues that needed my attention. Later my unit manager read me the riot act. She thought I made her look bad to the CEO, which was not my intention.
Good grief, how ridiculous! These managers with such tender feelings need to get over themselves!
My partner asks when he gets home and I say "It was alright, how was yours?" He says "It was alright" then settles to watch his favourite TV show. I don't know how his favourite TV show triggers me, but as soon as it starts I suddenly think of all the things that happened in my day that I want to talk about. So I'm in the kitchen prepping dinner and wander into lounge room waxing lyrical how irritating it was that so&so rang in sick AGAIN! And then so&so did or didn't do something, a client called me when psychotic and OH. MY. GOD. my boss told me .
My partner pauses the TV and listens politely to all this extremely uninteresting information. Once I've purged, I trot back to the kitchen and I'm happy.
For the social niceties, just answer "fine, thank you" and move on. No stranger or casual acquaintance really wants to hear about your day no matter how bad, or good it may have been. But I do find it necessary for my sanity to be able to talk to somebody about my day. I love to share the funny stories, and there are a lot working with elderly patients many of whom are in varying stages of dementia. Even more important is to vent about the bad days so I can let it go and not dwell on them. So yes, just continue to say "fine, thank you" to most people, but do have that person you can go to and really talk about your day. It helps if that person is a nurse and "gets it" but even if your person isn't a nurse it helps to have somebody you can count on to listen.
I disagree with several PPs. If I ask someone how their day was, I expect a genuine answer. So if someone asks me how my day was, I'll tell them how it was without specifics/HIPAA issues. I can't really get into it, but it was a really rough night. It was a great night, lots of people got to home today. It was an ok night, we had some rough moments, but we had good outcomes. My friends and family understand that I can't tell them more, but I'm not going to tell someone it was a good day when it wasn't.
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icare2
2 Posts
I disagree with people that say people don't care. I always have in my head that when I ask the question that someone will talk about in anywhere for 2 seconds to 3 minutes. However, I generally avoid asking people "how are you?" I lack enough time and patience to listen to them.
I have learned that some people value good listeners.