Balance? What is this balance of which you speak?
I have another blog for my photos, but I’ve been trying to sneak up on these birds since May and finally got a good snap of them this afternoon. It was worth the wait. I love their little expressions (“whatcha doin’?”).
What am I doing? Not blogging. I’ve had a few nights off and now I have a few nights on, which is about how it tends to go. I have been crossing small distasteful postpone-able tasks off my lists because they stopped being postpone-able and spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time curled up in my recliner with the new Sophie Kinsella book.
It seems I’m crispy with work-related burnout. It’s not my profession itself that’s burning me out; I love healthcare, and I love being a nurse. The three big bad B’s, not so much. (Never heard of them? They are bickering, back-stabbing, and bullshit.) But these things are easily confused (am I burned out on my JOB or my CAREER?), and I needed to get them sorted. A big part of a successful nursing career is learning to cope with these situations, and I’m still learning. ER nurses seem to get burned out faster and worse than nurses in other specialties, and I knew that going in. It all boils down to I have a good job, I’m good at it, and I am confident that I will eventually come within a glancing blow of balance. I had fair success with chick lit and chocolate, if anyone else wants to experiment with that and report back!
So do you hear that you are “too nice” to your patients? I think the day that I sell out my empathy/compassion/kindness for some skewed “Nurse Ratched” persona is the day that burnout will begin for me.
You know burnout is prevelent with ER nurses, but I think once an ER nurse always an ER nurse. I have nursed for over 22years and have done med/surg, palliative, ICU(15yrs) and now Recovery Room nursing. I think my resolve was if I felt I was getting burnout I changed the type of nursing I was doing. I LOVE nursing and everything it brings me. You seem to have a pretty good head on your shoulders and I am sure you will see your way through this.
Would-be nurses, most but not all of whom were female, studied and worked for a few years in the Philippines before taking up far more lucrative jobs abroad.