What did you do when you got burnt out?

sweetmuffin48 · Jul 25, 2015

I feel burnt out when I am spread so thin that I can't go home and honestly tell myself that "I took really great care of my patients today" The endless phone calls, rapid responses, needy family members, charting about the thing that you already charted, and back to back admissions that have a tube in every orifice make is difficult to have that time to get to know your patients and educate them about important things to keep them healthy and out of the hospital. I want to show my patients that I care and sometimes I just can't I have one foot out the door with my pocket phone ringing throwing pills in the patient's mouth with the other hand. The endless charting and double charting and sometimes triple charting the same thing keeps me away from the bedside care that I love. That is not nursing to me and it makes me very depressed and very disappointed in myself. To help with burnout I like to think of all the reasons why I became a nurse and the times that I did have the time to make a difference in someones life.

Sometimes if I could just take a potty break sometime during my 12 hour shift I would be forever grateful and feel less burnt out....If you can't care for yourself how can you care for others? Those burnt out/funny facial expressions are us trying to hold in the three cups of coffee that we drank before we came in to work that day.

whichone'spink, BSN, RN · Jul 25, 2015

I changed jobs from med-surg to PACU weekend status. On Saturdays and Sundays I am the only person there unless I need to call in the on-call nurse. I like not seeing anybody's stupid face for hours at a time.

dreamer30 · Jul 26, 2015

I changed jobs from med-surg to PACU weekend status. On Saturdays and Sundays I am the only person there unless I need to call in the on-call nurse. I like not seeing anybody's stupid face for hours at a time.

Love it!

NOADLS · Jul 26, 2015

If I ever burn out, which I actually think would be impossible (I am more at risk for getting a pressure sore at work than burning out), I would call in sick the next day which should reset the system for the following shift.

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Apr 24, 2016

Has anyone ever got burnt out of being on the floor? What did you do? What new nursing area did you take up? Was the pay comparable?

I know this thread is being resurrected from a slumber, but I moved to case management after having gotten burnt out from floor nursing. Being a CM who works from home is a breath of fresh air and my stress level has decreased.

Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN · May 26, 2016

I like not seeing anybody's stupid face for hours at a time.

That is just the best! That would be my dream job.

Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN · May 26, 2016

This is timely. I used to love my job but all of a sudden I'm having trouble coping.

Several worlds collided to make make my job intolerable lately. I work in an acute dialysis unit, one of the few places that has its own unit. In the past year a lot of people retired and haven't been replaced. Meanwhile our census is up 21%. Also meanwhile lots PCAs left and the one who are still here do just the bare minimum. They clean machines and transport patients and that's it! When they bring us a patient they don't help transferthe patient into bed. They park them by the door and then run. We have to beg other nurses to help transfer patients. So forget about feeding them, taking vitals, testing blood sugar, emptying trash. They don't even string our machines anymore. We write them up. Management won't do anything. So while we are scrambling around, doing all their work, they sit down and look at their phones. So on top of having fewer nurses, we have had to pick up the PCA work too.

And thats on the days we have techs. Most weekends we don't have a tech. We self schedule so none of the techs schedule themselves for weekends. Our supervisor said "you guys need to schedule yourselves to work weekends". The techs said "no we don't want to" and the supervisor said "oh okay". And that's where it ended.

It used to be such a great place to work, but now I'm just so exhausted. And I can't get enough rest on my days off to get ready for the next day. On the days we don't have techs - that is, every weekend - when I have to push all my patients back to their rooms it just kills me. I physically cannot do it anymore.

For a while I thought I could ride it out until they get us some help, but I don't think I can. We get new techs and they start out doing okay, but they get fed up with doing all the work while the other techs stand around and watch them, so they get fed up and leave. It is obvious that management has washed their hands of this issue so it's not going away. I just don't know what else to do.