When nurses become jaded and angry every day, what are they, and those around them, to do?
A new piece in NursesTogether.com says if you’re a jaded nurse, it’s time to reevaluate and ask yourself why you got into the profession, how you have made a difference so far, and what you love about nursing. If these answers are enough to remind you that you want to be a nurse, then reset your attitude and give it your best, columnist Stephanie Staples argues.
However, the column also prompts nurses to ask themselves in times of stress if you are giving the best care, bringing colleagues’ attitudes up or pulling them down with your attitude, and whether they have any energy or emotion left for family at the end of the day. These are certainly tough questions. Though some nurses might say that the answers depend on any given day, if you reevaluate yourself enough and realize that your job is detrimental to your health and happiness, as well as those around, you may have some tough decisions to make, says Staples.
The column urges nurses who are no longer happy at their jobs to move on. That’s a tough message, but Staples argues that unhappy nurses create ripple effects that affect not only colleagues in their units, but also patient satisfaction and safety. Unless you can overcome the challenges of nursing and ultimately come through with the same motivation that led you to join the profession, it may be time to move on.
What do you think about this opinion? Have you dealt with a similar issue? Please let us know by commenting below.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
The life expectancy of a bedside nurse has dwindled due to the fact that nurses are taking care of higher acuity patients and face the threat of legal retribution on a daily basis. The paperwork requirements have tripled and the time for patient:nurse interaction has become minimal.
When a nurse is faced with this type of dilemma there should be extensive thought put into their decision. The nurse should first remember the true reason that she chose the art of nursing. If it was for anything other than caring and compassion than by all means…..GET OUT! If the nurse truly does care for the patients that need her but has become burnt out over time she should consider other areas of nursing. Nursing education, patient teaching, writing and various other specialties are out there waiting for a someone to fill the void.
One should make their decision with much thought and feeling from the heart.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:12 am
As a residency coordinator with new nursing graduates, I face 2 huge challenges in trying to help these fledgling nurses enter & stay in the nusing workforce in a positive way.
1) Finding & keeping enough knowledgeable, caring preceptors that are capable of helping teach & nurture these new nurses appropriate, instead of being all too ready to cast them out there quickly so they have better staffing. Training helps, but only when there is support from management/adminstration as well.
2) Lack of commitment & support on the part of some unit nurse managers & adminstration. Verbal support is provided, but with some, nearly constant monitoring is necessary to try to prevent abuse of these tender new graduates. No matter how hard you try, a program to ease them into this new role will not work if adminstrative & managerial support are lacking. It seems to have worsened with the economy & the movement is back to the old “any body with a license will do…and new grads are cheaper licensed bodies to fill the holes on the schedule” even if they are not competent or confident in that role yet.
3) Misplacement in their original unit of hire. Nursing school really does not, by & large, provide with a real-world understanding of what working on a particular unit will be like…whether or not it will actually be a good fit for them. Ever hospital & every unit is different, not just because of the type of nursing done there, but because of the culture of the entire group of people that make up the “family” on that particular unit. They really can’t know until they give a unit a try whether or not it is fits them like home…or whether they will fit in. When they are hired directly out of school for an nursing position on a particular unit, all too often, they find that it is NOT where they really feel they ought to be. Maybe hiring them in as a nurse tech who rotates to several units over a 2 month period before deciding on “home” would be a better approach. It would also give both the new grad & the facility the bonus of making it much easier later on when staffing adjustments need to be made that require pulling nurses to other units….they would have at least been to a few of those & not feel so alien in that arena.
Another problem I see crop up over & over is that students (doesn’t matter what school of nursing from which they come) often have instructors that have convinced them that they really “need” to start out on a med-surg type unit to become good nurses. I’ve taught as nursing faculty in schools of nursing for better than a decade now & I have to say, we have got to do away with this old school line of thinking!! We have so many nurses who come to the profession as a second career, at a later time in their lives. We also have a tremendous number (easily found in the nursing literature on the shortage & nursing retention) of new grads who will leave their first nursing job within 6 months (about half of them in fact), and & significant chunk of those will leave nursing altogether at that point, losing them as the assets they could be to our profession, possibly simply because of a bad experience in their first postion. I have to wonder how mnany of those leave because they weren’t in the right area of nursing on on the right unit with the right preceptor with appropriate managerial/adminstrative support?? If the reason I got into nursing is because I loved my experience giving birth & the way the nurses helped me there, then why in the world is it necessary that I start out on a med-surg floor? Especially if I only have 10-15 years before retirement age?
I know about this experience personally…
Back in the dark ages when I became a brand new nurse (25+ years ago now), I was placed in absolutely the wrong place with only about a week of orientation to work in a specialty unit I’d visited all of twice as a student nurse. Terrified is a pathetically weak word for what I felt there as the only RN taking care of extremely ill patients. After 6 months of crying almost every night that I had to go into work & praying that I didn’t accidentally cause harm or death to my patients, I went to our DON telling her I needed a transfer to an area with more support & that was a better fit, or that I was prepared to get out of this gig altogether & go back to working at Wendy’s & Burger Shack (the jobs that got me through nursing school.)I was as serious as I could get at that point, & luckily had a DON who listened, understood & allowed me to move to the pediatric unit….which truly is my passion in nursing. I had wonderful support there & it completely changed how I felt about nusing as a profession. That experience is why I snapped up this position when it became available…to create a program that would help new grads avoid that sort of trauma & hopefully decrease the risk of losing them to the profession altogether.
The burn-out topic spurred me to write about this because I think it applies in several ways. Burnt-out floor nurses & preceptor, burnt-out & disconnected managers/adminstrators & misguided new grads who are subjected to those folks will only worsen our problems with recruiting & retaining new nurses to help alleviate the shortage. They will burn-out as well, like shooting stars in the heavens, if we don’t start nurturing them as we care & concern as we would expect of nurses caring for patients.
Off the soapbox for the day
& Thank you for providing this forum to discuss the effects of burn-out on all of us…well seasoned & new alike.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:49 am
[...] Should Unhappy Nurses Quit the Profession? [...]
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I have been a nurse for 13 years and I only wish that I could flip burgers at McDonald’s and make what I make as a nurse. If I could………….I would gladly give up my license. I have absolutely no compassion left in me anymore.