Its a new year
Happy New Year everyone. I know it’s late for wishes but with a hospital stay, rehab stay, and a birthday have been kinda distracted about things. Thoughts have been all over the place. I think I need some time to reflect, think about things, and pray about what I should share. After reading a post today about health care burn out, it helped me with some ideas.
I have been frequently asked over my career, knowing what I know now and have been through, would I still have become a nurse. My answer is yes. Have there days when I threw my hands in the air and say ” what was I thinking”. Those were a lot less than the days when I felt I truly did make a difference in peoples days. Even if it was taking an extra minute to fluff their pillows, getting cream and sugar for their coffee, sitting down and explaining things after the doctor just went through things so quickly they didn’t understand, or just a smile or a hand hold when they were feeling scared or unsure. There were many times I prayed with a patient or their family and honestly that made me feel
as good as it did them.
Health care certainly is not the same as when I started. As sad as it is health care has become a business. Facilities and hospitals have to make money in order to pay staff, feed the patients, pay for supplies, medications, and the list goes on and on. With all that going on it can cause the focus to come off CARE, where is should be focused. As a nurse that has worked all shifts, many different departments, and in leadership I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of most things. The last many years of my career was spent in management positions and I saw both sides of floor staff and management and trying to balance the two. Can’t place an order for supplies because have to wait for first of month d/t budget versus the nurse on the floor that needs the supplies for wound care, changing catheters, OTC meds and etc. Being told need to make sure staff is clocking out in time but they are finishing a dressing change or talking with family or end of shift fall. All of these things contribute to “burn out”. Everyday before starting work I would pray for God to give wisdom and direction, the energy to do the job well, to be a blessing to someone, and most of all to give care to patients and staff. Staff needs care just like the patients do, just in different things. Respect, appreciation, thanks, acknowledgement of a job well done goes a long way in preventing burn out.During this last rehab stay I was asked by a young CNA if over the years if I ever felt like just giving it all. He stated he felt maybe that health care wasn’t for him. He was feeling very over worked, unappreciated, and not respected. This made me feel so very sad. He has been a CNA for only a little over a year. He is one of the kindest, most respectful, gracious young man I had met in a long time, plus he is a great CNA. It’s so sad that after just a year he is feeling this way. We need to figure out a way to keep people in health care. The long hours, the craziness of the shift, the unacceptable way patients and families treat nurses makes health care very hard. Add to all of this the exposure to diseases, violence of patients and families, short staffing, and nurses go home feeling that they didn’t make a difference that day because they didn’t have time for that hand holding or fluffing the pillow, plus they didn’t get lunch or pee the whole day. I don’t have the answers on how to fix all this but when there is someone feeling burn out after just a year, there is a problem.
So as this year goes on, please remember all the health care workers and where we would all be without them. These past 2 years as I have been on the other side of health care has made me even more aware of how we need nurses, doctors, CNA’s, social workers, everyone who plays apart in health care. As you pray daily please pray for all the nurses and CNA’s out there providing care day after day.

Thanks all for reading.