Burning the Candle From Both Ends

  

  I don't recall ever wanting to be a nurse growing up. Its hard for me to admit that because I've been a nurse almost 9 years now. It feels like it makes me sound like less of a nurse to say that. But just because I don't have a passion for the job, doesn't mean I'm not good at it. I have compassion for my patients. I take good care of my patients and I will take care of you if need be, without waiver, ALWAYS, and you'll never know that I lost my fire for nursing some time ago, or maybe never even had it. Compassion for people in general. I have a passion to complete tasks and do good work, whether that be cleaning my house, writing a blog, doing a thorough preflight, stocking my rooms for work, taking care of a patient with a sore toe, or taking care of a massive heart attack patient. I have a passion for good work ethic. I have compassion for people as a whole. Passion for this career? Not anymore. When I was going to nursing school, I knew it was a good step for my family. More money. Job security, after all, people will always need healthcare. I could help better the health of people. I had plans of getting us all out of Eastern Kentucky and moving somewhere with more opportunities in life for my kids and less small town drama. I assumed that I would be making enough to pay my student loan payment. I assumed that like everyone else, I'd just continue on and be a nurse practitioner. That's just the proper progression of things, right? Kind of like getting engaged, getting married, buying a house, finishing college, having kids...respectively. Although we know 9 times out of 10 it does not happen perfectly. Kudos if you were able to line that up, though. 

  When I graduated, passed the NCLEX, beat the odds, and started my critical care career, I had a goal. Some 4 1/2 years later, I met that goal. That was fun. That was the one and only time during my career I felt passion for my work. I am not sure though that it wasn't just the surroundings or the environment causing me to experience such a passion; or if I had truly found my  niche. Needless to say, that didn't last long because while I don't often get told "no" in my adult life...Life often tells me "NO".  It bucks up and says, "We're done here." I am not honestly sure what these things in life intend to teach me or if they are just a Karma event. Sometimes life has a way of being sort of like a thief in the night and snatching things out from under you when you least expect it. You think you can repair it, fall  back into it, just like being woken up from a dream only to roll over and enter in to what appears to be a completely different dimension. 

  It can be hard to comprehend or understand if you're not a nurse. Some nurses have a hard time identifying with this way of thinking. I think now, more than ever, other nurses understand the small amount of those of us out there who are in this very unique situation. I think Covid has placed a lot of us in this situation who otherwise weren't in this situation before. Some of these people still have a passion for the career of nursing, but are so burnt out due to what we all experience that they want to leave the industry altogether. What else would we do? Where would we make the money we have built our life around making? Our own decision, of course, it isn't anyone else's problem, haha. We've done that part to ourselves.  A lot of nurses will argue that we have been working in unprecedented times. Being an ER nurse primarily for the majority of my nursing career, I can tell you that we have ALWAYS been abused. We have rarely ever gotten lunches, and we never ever got breaks. The labor board says we should, but facilities very rarely give two shits about employee retention on a level that actually makes sense. 

https://healthtimes.com.au/hub/mental-health/37/practice/nm/nursing-burnout-at-concerning-levels-says-theatre-nurse/5174/

  This article was written last year just at the actual peak of Covid. Before we'd been doing it for, get this, nearly TWO YEARS. Two weeks to flatten the curve, my ass. Here we are, almost two years later, still grinding and things are no better, working in this mess than they were this time last year. That in itself has to be a contributing factor...the feeling of hopelessness, like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Will we ever be able to uncover our faces and see smiles again? Will we ever be able to live without maskne? Will we ever be able to wear our glasses without watching them fog and unfog with every breath? Will we ever be able to work and just take care of our patients and not worry about what covid protocol we might be breaking? Or is this our curse forever? 

  At one point, I had a goal in my career. My dream career was unreachable, I had no way to become a pilot, that's silly anyway. :P So, in my nursing career, I set a goal for medivac. Once I obtained my goal, I was finally ready to settle in and actually enjoy and value my career. I would've stayed there in the warm sunny basking area for eternity probably. Alas, along came the shoe of life and my career was the ant crawling on the sidewalk carrying it's little leaf to the other side and SPLATTTT...lol. I suppose maybe I did it for all the wrong reasons, ya know, becoming a nurse. Or maybe my "calling" was just too specific. It makes it hard to stomach a career or a job, just a job at this point when you know that the only things keeping you running (your weekend or days off to spend time with your family, your breaks or lunches, your paycheck) aren't really what the job is truly about. And even moreso when you don't get those things. When you don't have time to even do the things you desire with your family, let alone have some "Me Time" to "decompress"...it just gets placed in a little box neatly packaged on the shelf with the rest of the bullshit we deal with on the daily until something else happens and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Coping mechanisms decrease greatly when the only reward is the paycheck. It goes to show you that you cannot fix everything with money...and 
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY on almost every level of life...

  They teach us about Maslow's in nursing school, and how it's basically the foundation of nursing. IYKYK. We are supposed to regard the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs at all times, safeguarding the patient's basic needs of survival first. Hence, the warm blanket, turkey sandwich, and ice. 

  B U T... there's always a but. We don't even regard the Hierarchy for ourselves...we don't get even the most basic of needs. Enough sleep. Food. Breaks. Lunches. I was going to list adequate pay or pay raises...but now, and ONLY NOW is the industry just seeing what healthcare workers are worth. I'm quite sure you've seen what kind of stupid money they're offering for contracts these days. Why in Great Odin's beard would you stay staff if you could literally bring home thousands of dollars a WEEK for working the same job for 36 or 48 hours you've been working for the last X years. Who would be crazy enough to put up with the shit we put up with nowadays for LESS money? We've always had staff shortages and honestly I don't know what or who is to blame for that because everyone and their sister is a nurse, right? Poor planning or poor staffing in the facilities? High turnover rate? Wonder why...maybe because you pay crappy and don't give lunches, I don't know, could possibly be the issue...at least if I'm making X thousand a week I can tolerate not getting breaks or lunches and getting reamed with the schedule, right? Eh. It makes it just a smidge more tolerable, I can tell you that from personal experience. But it doesn't fix it all. The needs are still not met, and that money is only an ABD pad and a tourniquet when you have an arterial bleed. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I can't be. But some folks sure make you feel like you're the only one who could possibly feel this way and you should be thankful for a job to go to and the money you make. Well, Karen, who said I wasn't? Just because I have a job and am bringing home a pay check doesn't negate the abuse or the fatigue that I have in my SOUL, ok? okay. So what does that leave for us, though? The staffing issue...If everyone goes to travel, who's going to work staff and will the shortage be perpetual until they completely re-work the system? Right now we're not allowed to have lives outside of work - even if these are our off days, they're literally free game to the scheduling committee if you're full time (and sometimes even if you're a traveler, and you sadly get treated like a resource, not a warm body) and if they want you to work, they're going to work you. Fuck your family and your home and your own self...you need to help your facility!!!! Thus, we have call-ins because people feel the need to take a mental health day, call in sick, because they probably are sick...of being abused. 

  Why do you think photos like this even exist on the internet? There's a whole group of us who are burning the candle at both ends and are about to meet in the middle. Some of us already met at the middle and the flame went out long ago, we're burnt out. I've done this for a minute and I've worked with A LOT of people at a lot of different places. I've seen Janet who is 110% burnt out and treats her coworkers and her patients like crap because of it. I've always been an advocate for "If ya hate it that bad, move along..." but the truth is, you can't. There's nothing else for us to do unless we want to go work retail or I suppose start a new career, or get lucky and fall into something that pays similarly. I've seen Becky who is a new nurse and full of light in her eyes and the joy of helping others. That's refreshing and depressing all at the same time because you get to watch the light burn out right in front of you...MOST of the time, anyway. We should get awards for things that we DON'T say. I am one of those unicorns who will never ever let my patient know that I feel the way I feel about my career because I am just there to take care of them to the best of my ability and make sure they have all the things they need. I will never sacrifice care for my own selfish feelings, ever. But dammit, that's hard. I put a lot away in the box... And for those of you who happen to do this job for years and never experience burnout, well, I'd love to know what that's like. I can only assume its because this was your calling and you are abundantly blessed in that department and I can truly say I am jealous. I knew for a minute what working in my calling was like, it was awesome. 

  I truly feel like I know what my calling is, most days...but it is so off into the future. My calling has always been the same since childhood. I suppose if I never went into healthcare I'd have the innate desire to help others in some form or fashion and I suppose I'd have fulfilled that in one way or another. 

  

  I want to conclude, but not before asking you to google "healthcare worker burnout", or "nursing burnout". Its not just nurses, its everyone, all HCWs. But look at the absolute endless plethora of data, surveys, information, preventative measures, etc on it. Its harrowing. 

  Where do we go from here? 

xoxo