The Tipping Point in My Nursing Career
This week I ended my 4th nursing job in 2 years. It’s not for lack of trying, that’s for certain. After my injury in May of 2021 I was on a mission to find a nursing position that I could tolerate working. After a decade working in critical settings and feeding off the adrenaline that a Code Blue dishes out like a buffet I had reached my limit. I was not new to trauma, in fact I believed that I had become immune to it throughout my life. I’m one of those crazy souls who thrives under pressure and can keep calm when things metaphorically hit the fan. But something about COVID, something about the intensity the endlessness of it all and the sheer hopelessness it instilled in my nursing heart changed the person that I am.
Navigating the Aftermath of Frontline Burnout
The burnout and pure exhaustion I felt in my soul from working frontlines left me with C-PTSD and it was months before I could even drive past a hospital. I presumed the strain of under staffing and over working only existed inside the walls of that kind of medical prison. The last two years has shown me through multiple different roles that healthcare is in fact a business and it has zero appreciation for its staff that actually care for their paying customers. Of course I’ve known this, but the ability that I have had to look at the industry from the periphery highlights the extent to which healthcare workers are being exploited in every way and patients are being taken advantage of at every corner.
The Underrated Sacrifice of Healthcare Professionals
Nursing takes heart, it takes compassion and caring. The average human doesn’t just sign up to be the frontline defense in a complete strangers life. It’s not wildly appealing to show up to work and get yelled at by physicians, families and patients, let alone take on the intense responsibility of caring for a human life. But nurses do. They show up, smile through the abuse, respond with kindness to people with unreasonable expectations, stay calm when someones life starts to slip away in front of them and then respond to save that life as if it were one of their own family members. Not many people find appeal in a career that revolves around to comforting sick children, holding the hand of the dying, supporting people with mental health issues or take on the schooling it takes to get a nursing degree.
A Broken System and A Disheartened Nurse
I’m appalled by a system that is using the using the goodness of someones soul to be pill pushers to a population of society that really needs so much more than another medication shoved down their throat. I am finished with a system that over assigns nurses patients and expectations, continuously adding more forms, more audits and more expectations for less and less.
Embracing Uncertainty and New Beginnings
So I said no to yet another nursing job that felt like I was giving more than I could sustain. To another company that felt like they put profits before patients and could care less about the person lying in bed asking for help.
I’m not sure what is next for me, I’m feeling a huge tug to exit nursing entirely. I’m terrified what that means though, if I’m not a nurse, who am I?
A Temporary Respite from Reality
For the next two weeks I am a girl on a cross country camping trip with her boyfriend. I am an unemployed RN, happily I might add. The next 14 days I have time to separate from reality and just write it all out.
Stay Tuned for More Reflections
Hope you enjoy my blog! Look for my book Just A Nurse coming in February 2024!