This is an excellent and needful essay, Theresa. Burnout is about the moral conditions of work. To say that “moral resilience” and “wellness” programs are the solution is to absolve management of treating nurses immorally. By the way, I don’t know what “moral resilience” is. “Resilience” is a word borrowed from metallurgy to describe the maximal pressure under which an alloy can be placed before losing its elasticity. Is that what we want to find out from anyone, much less people whose profession is to care for the vulnerable?
Nursing students have a much higher baseline of childhood trauma than the general population (Clark, 2021). This makes them vulnerable to tolerating unacceptable situations for too long, and possibly believing that if they try harder, things will improve. Unfortunately, this creates a financial benefit to the broken system! In the trauma course I teach at Pitt, I teach my social work students what a toxic workplace looks like and feels like, so they can get out rather than try harder! I also happen to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, which promotes the ability to see things clearly and act skillfully. Any good wellness program will make it MORE likely that a person will abandon an oppressive and abusive situation.
You are so correct to be angry at the suggestion that nurses need only take a deep breath every time they use hand sanitizer to alleviate burn out. Not only does it make it seem as if the problem is minimal and nurses need to do things on their own to solve the problem, but it also ignores the fact that quite often nurses must use sanitizer to save time when under pressure before they go about their next patient contact when indeed soap and water washing might be a better option. I am also tired of listening to ideas that put the onus of reducing burnout on what nurses need to do on their own. We need health care systems to support us with such things as better staffing, staffing ratios, and flexible scheduling. There needs to be adequate staffing so that nurses are confident that they have the resources to provide safe care and also be able to take a meal breaks. Hospital administration needs to seek and respect nursing input on what should be done. A system should be in place for this. Many nurses are also parents of young children. Lack of flexible scheduling and available childcare also leads to burnout. Health care systems should have onsite childcare in place as well as sick childcare for when nurses' children are sick. Another helpful touch would be prepared meals that staff could purchase and bring home for their families after having worked a long shift. The executives that run hospital systems need to be aware of what needs to be done if staff burnout is to be alleviated. Thank you for writing about this.
After reading your article I read this from the San Diego Union Tribune…. Sooooo troubling from so many angles:
Hospitals in county look for ways to cut attacks on workers.
Patient assaults on health care staffers in U.S. nearly doubled from 2011 to 2020
BY PAUL SISSON
One year ago, a jail prisoner receiving treatment at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego wrested away the gun of the deputy sheriff who was guarding him and fired three rounds before a nursing assistant helped disarm him.
Internal documents reveal that the incident sent caregivers scrambling for cover. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But even today, many who suddenly found themselves in harm’s way relive those moments.
“Any time there’s an incident across the country, I hear from the 10th floor at Mercy, because they’re concerned that it’s going to happen again,” said Chris Van Gorder, CEO of Scripps Health.
While there are plenty of anecdotes to illustrate the point, such as last week’s fatal shooting of a Tennessee hand surgeon or the 2022 murder of a Tulsa surgeon by a patient angry with the outcome of his back surgery, the numbers also document a growing trend.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of intentional injuries against health care workers and technicians has increased from 6.7 to 12.9 per 10,000 workers from 2011 to 2020. A survey of health care workers nationwide conducted in early 2023 found that 40 percent reported that they were directly involved in workplace violence in the previous two years.
Van Gorder, a former police officer turned health care executive, said Scripps’ own tracking systems show that violence against its workers was up 28 percent in the previous 12 months. In two other recent cases, he said, patients in custody of Border Patrol agents tried to take sidearms.
The executive said something has to change.
“I get worked up on this one; I’m in charge of all of these people, these are my people,” Van Gorder said. “They’re getting hurt.”
That feeling seems to be widely shared.
After pitching the idea of a task force to a narrow group of San Diego County health and law enforcement leaders, the idea has quickly grown, now pulling in leaders from every health system operating a hospital across the region as well as the law enforcement agencies that respond to medical facilities in an emergency.
An inaugural meeting of the full task force in late June included three medical personnel sharing stories of instances where they had been personally affected by violence in their workplaces. The meeting’s minutes detail cases where patients have choked, punched and pulled their caregivers to the ground by their coats, even doing hand-to-hand combat with officers in the middle of busy emergency rooms.
Dr. Asia Takeuchi, an emergency medicine specialist at Sharp Memorial Hospital, attended the meeting and shared that her facility has been calling “code green” more often than used to be the case. That’s the phrase that goes out over the facility’s announcement system when a medical provider urgently needs assistance from security personnel.
From January through May of 2023, she said, the smallest number of code green calls that Memorial experienced in a month were 34. The largest was 64. That’s between one and two incidents of significant violence per day.
Recently, she said, the hospital instituted a Taser protocol in its emergency department for situations when a patient can’t be calmed down with words or medications. One incident, she said, involved a severely agitated patient who picked up a metal medical stand and threw it into the light fixture of his room.
“Unfortunately, he just continued to escalate and escalate; he required restraints and, unfortunately, ended up having to be Tased,” Takeuchi said. The hospital also has recently added metal detectors, she said.
It’s not hard to find other local examples.
Last week, Van Gorder said, a patient admitted at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, which is not yet scanning all incoming patients with metal detectors as is the case at Scripps Mercy in Hillcrest, was found to be carrying two weapons.
“While they were securing his belongings they discovered a six-inch Bowie knife and a silver-plated revolver,” Van Gorder said. “We ended up confiscating that as we always do when we find weapons ... when the guy was discharged and he found out his gun and knife wasn’t there anymore, he threatened our security officers.
“Of course, you know, carrying a concealed Bowie knife and a gun without a permit are both felonies in the State of California.”
Both weapons, he said, were turned over to the San Diego Police Department.
The task force, Van Gorder said, is designed to increase the amount of communication going on, both among hospitals experiencing violent incidents and between health providers and law enforcement.
Better communication, he said, is especially necessary in common situations such as bringing patients picked up on “5150” holds when incidents in the community cause officers to suspect someone may be a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled and unable to take care of themselves. Different officers from different departments may handle such a situation differently, with regular disagreement on what constitutes a valid involuntary hold and what does not.
“We are extraordinarily supportive of law enforcement, and they’re generally very supportive of hospitals, but there are issues and sometimes, when it comes down to managing these situations, it’s really important for us to have a liaison that we can contact literally 24/7 to be able to discuss issues that come up like threats made against hospital staff,” Van Gorder said.
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan is part of the task force and said this week that hearing the stories of health care workers who have been harmed by patients during treatment made it clear that more should be done.
She said her office does pursue reported incidents of assault, but few of those that occur are forwarded to her office for review.
“Nationally, we can see that there has been an increase in violence in hospitals against doctors, against nurses, against hospital staff,” she said. “I think what’s happening is that it’s under-reported.
“I think that, sometimes, the hospital staff thinks that, because they’re in the business of caring for people, that they have to take, take the abuse.”
The DA said that she has allocated a special prosecutor and an investigator to work on hospital violence reports. Hospitals, though, are different from almost any other kind of venue, especially because they treat people whose medical conditions may cause them to behave violently.
Many health care workers may refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, regardless of how much they were personally harmed.
Stephan said she believes that there is enough discretion available to handle such situations.
“In my mind, it’s important that these incidents are investigated and prosecuted if appropriate because, you know, then you send a clear message that the hospital workforce is something we value and we’re going to take care of,” Stephan said. “But, within the justice system, there are different, very humane ways to deal with people with, for example, mental health (issues), through behavioral health court, collaborative courts, mental health diversion.”
Takeuchi, the Sharp emergency physician, said she agrees that hospital personnel could benefit from reporting incidents and from changes to current criminal laws that make assault inside a hospital a lesser legal infraction than it is for an identical infraction out in the community. A bill proposed in 2018 that would have equalized penalties for assault on health care workers did not pass.
“Those moderate aggressions that you just kind of ignore because you kind of assume that they’re just part of the job, eventually those add up,” Takeuchi said. “They just eventually lead to bigger aggressions if they’re ignored, and so bringing them up and bringing them to light more often, hopefully, will make people realize what’s happening, and that’s how change can happen.”
Hospitals, Van Gorder noted, face particular challenges around security in that they must take all comers in their emergency departments and patient rooms, in most cases, cannot be locked.
Part of the task force’s early work, he said, is asking local police departments to make visits and recommendations on how the physical security of workers and patients can be increased without violating rules and regulations.
“We’re different than any other industry, we’re not a normal business with normal clients that come here,” Van Gorder said.”
Your column stirred up a lot of feelings for me, Theresa. First, anger at those individuals not providing direct patient care who promulgate asinine and disrespectful solutions for the challenges faced by professionals caring for sick people. Your comment about the sudden rage you experienced at the “take a cleansing breath” comment resonated deeply with me. Second, as a primary care clinician, I have always thought that providing entry level care within the health system is less a white-collar profession and more of a blue-collar one, and I am completely fine with that. I have great respect for those individuals who provide essential services, and I always felt both a kinship with folks in that sector and alienation from those members of the healthcare industry who have either forgotten their service roots or fled from them. Perhaps our current system may need to fail to achieve something better, but that prospect disregards the tremendous efforts being made by nurses, doctors, and other healthcare personnel who show up to a tough workplace environment and provide professional and, yes, loving care to their fellow human beings day in and day out... ok
Keep up this advocacy through your writing, Theresa; it is a powerful weapon in the struggle to reform our system.
Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023Liked by Theresa Brown
Yay Teresa! Give me an amen, shout it from the rooftops!
I am one of those people who has taught wellness and resiliency programs to thousands of nurses for more than 20 years!
Every word you say in your article is true and along with you I’ve been on that bandwagon for more than 20 years. Nothing changes as far as management improving the work environment specifically with increased staffing.
When I first started introducing my wellness and stress relief programs to my local board of nursing and beyond to obtain continuing education credits, they resisted. I was shocked to hear them say that they were not interested in these kinds of programs for nurses!!!!…that I needed to position my teachings and trainings for patient care, NOT nurses. insert face palm here or your fantastic right on banging your head poster.
Fast forward, nursing leader ship organizations, finally caught on, and the word self-care and self-care programs are now ubiquitous. Then came the buzz word resiliency, and it was all about resiliency. Sigh. OK, self-care, resiliency, they are absolutely needed for a quality of life, both personal and professional, that being sad in the professional arena of medicine for both nurses and doctors who are in the front lines, the priority should be, and has always been on a safe adequately staffed Supportive environment. Alas, in my experience with thousands of nurses all over the world and the feedback that I have gotten, it is the same old, same old, did I say same old story from all of them - that this support is missing and has always been missing.
In my view, both interventions are needed -the wellness programs and resiliency teachings, although hardly a cure all, are a start from leader ship. I do know when staff attend these programs it helps, even if only a little, even if it’s only a drop of hope and help. I remember that mother Theresa when cornered to help the poorest of the poor, who leader ship (government) had abandoned, that what she was doing was only a drop in the Ocean.
Mother Theresa’s response? “ yes, this is true. However, that drop would be sorely missed.”
Theresa l hear you, l feel it. It took years to get my stress relief programs into the healthcare system for staffing. It has been years we are standing up for safe staffing. Nurses have been more vocal at this time globally than any time in history on this topic of standing up and shouting out and picketing For patient safety first! There have been baby step incremental improvements. We have a long way to go before we can walk with empowerment, instead of disempowerment, with energy, instead of depletion, and with renewed, faith, hope and love in our selfless service to humanity. I have hope. I believe. We shall overcome.
Gratitude to you for your gutsy, truthful and powerful article, you inspired me to write a comment and that is a rarity for me lol. May health, peace and love always be with you, Teresa.
You had me at this line--“but I suddenly wanted to punch that person, not out of anger, but to make the point that Zen practices are useless against real threats to personal safety, whether that’s one’s own safety, or the safety of our patients. “
And CCTT is dead on. Thank you again for speaking the truth.
I have worked in nursing homes throughout my career as a nurse. I often feel that administration does not care about staff burnout and high levels of stress. It is all about the money and making sure the beds are filled. I agree with your point about administration playing an active role in making sure nurses are supported and treated fairly. I gulp down my lunch for about 10-15 minutes because there is not a place to eat your meals, unless you sit in your car. There is also not a refrigerator to keep staff food so I bring a non nutritional meal that will not go bad until I consume it. I could go on and on with all the injustices that myself and other nurses have to deal with. It is no wonder that few people are going into the healthcare field. The documentation is constantly increasing all the time as well.
I’m so so tired of this profession . I’m hanging on by a thread . The money I make is good but I have to ask is it worth my exhaustion and unhappiness . ????
This is an excellent and needful essay, Theresa. Burnout is about the moral conditions of work. To say that “moral resilience” and “wellness” programs are the solution is to absolve management of treating nurses immorally. By the way, I don’t know what “moral resilience” is. “Resilience” is a word borrowed from metallurgy to describe the maximal pressure under which an alloy can be placed before losing its elasticity. Is that what we want to find out from anyone, much less people whose profession is to care for the vulnerable?
Nursing students have a much higher baseline of childhood trauma than the general population (Clark, 2021). This makes them vulnerable to tolerating unacceptable situations for too long, and possibly believing that if they try harder, things will improve. Unfortunately, this creates a financial benefit to the broken system! In the trauma course I teach at Pitt, I teach my social work students what a toxic workplace looks like and feels like, so they can get out rather than try harder! I also happen to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, which promotes the ability to see things clearly and act skillfully. Any good wellness program will make it MORE likely that a person will abandon an oppressive and abusive situation.
You are so correct to be angry at the suggestion that nurses need only take a deep breath every time they use hand sanitizer to alleviate burn out. Not only does it make it seem as if the problem is minimal and nurses need to do things on their own to solve the problem, but it also ignores the fact that quite often nurses must use sanitizer to save time when under pressure before they go about their next patient contact when indeed soap and water washing might be a better option. I am also tired of listening to ideas that put the onus of reducing burnout on what nurses need to do on their own. We need health care systems to support us with such things as better staffing, staffing ratios, and flexible scheduling. There needs to be adequate staffing so that nurses are confident that they have the resources to provide safe care and also be able to take a meal breaks. Hospital administration needs to seek and respect nursing input on what should be done. A system should be in place for this. Many nurses are also parents of young children. Lack of flexible scheduling and available childcare also leads to burnout. Health care systems should have onsite childcare in place as well as sick childcare for when nurses' children are sick. Another helpful touch would be prepared meals that staff could purchase and bring home for their families after having worked a long shift. The executives that run hospital systems need to be aware of what needs to be done if staff burnout is to be alleviated. Thank you for writing about this.
After reading your article I read this from the San Diego Union Tribune…. Sooooo troubling from so many angles:
Hospitals in county look for ways to cut attacks on workers.
Patient assaults on health care staffers in U.S. nearly doubled from 2011 to 2020
BY PAUL SISSON
One year ago, a jail prisoner receiving treatment at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego wrested away the gun of the deputy sheriff who was guarding him and fired three rounds before a nursing assistant helped disarm him.
Internal documents reveal that the incident sent caregivers scrambling for cover. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But even today, many who suddenly found themselves in harm’s way relive those moments.
“Any time there’s an incident across the country, I hear from the 10th floor at Mercy, because they’re concerned that it’s going to happen again,” said Chris Van Gorder, CEO of Scripps Health.
While there are plenty of anecdotes to illustrate the point, such as last week’s fatal shooting of a Tennessee hand surgeon or the 2022 murder of a Tulsa surgeon by a patient angry with the outcome of his back surgery, the numbers also document a growing trend.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of intentional injuries against health care workers and technicians has increased from 6.7 to 12.9 per 10,000 workers from 2011 to 2020. A survey of health care workers nationwide conducted in early 2023 found that 40 percent reported that they were directly involved in workplace violence in the previous two years.
Van Gorder, a former police officer turned health care executive, said Scripps’ own tracking systems show that violence against its workers was up 28 percent in the previous 12 months. In two other recent cases, he said, patients in custody of Border Patrol agents tried to take sidearms.
The executive said something has to change.
“I get worked up on this one; I’m in charge of all of these people, these are my people,” Van Gorder said. “They’re getting hurt.”
That feeling seems to be widely shared.
After pitching the idea of a task force to a narrow group of San Diego County health and law enforcement leaders, the idea has quickly grown, now pulling in leaders from every health system operating a hospital across the region as well as the law enforcement agencies that respond to medical facilities in an emergency.
An inaugural meeting of the full task force in late June included three medical personnel sharing stories of instances where they had been personally affected by violence in their workplaces. The meeting’s minutes detail cases where patients have choked, punched and pulled their caregivers to the ground by their coats, even doing hand-to-hand combat with officers in the middle of busy emergency rooms.
Dr. Asia Takeuchi, an emergency medicine specialist at Sharp Memorial Hospital, attended the meeting and shared that her facility has been calling “code green” more often than used to be the case. That’s the phrase that goes out over the facility’s announcement system when a medical provider urgently needs assistance from security personnel.
From January through May of 2023, she said, the smallest number of code green calls that Memorial experienced in a month were 34. The largest was 64. That’s between one and two incidents of significant violence per day.
Recently, she said, the hospital instituted a Taser protocol in its emergency department for situations when a patient can’t be calmed down with words or medications. One incident, she said, involved a severely agitated patient who picked up a metal medical stand and threw it into the light fixture of his room.
“Unfortunately, he just continued to escalate and escalate; he required restraints and, unfortunately, ended up having to be Tased,” Takeuchi said. The hospital also has recently added metal detectors, she said.
It’s not hard to find other local examples.
Last week, Van Gorder said, a patient admitted at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, which is not yet scanning all incoming patients with metal detectors as is the case at Scripps Mercy in Hillcrest, was found to be carrying two weapons.
“While they were securing his belongings they discovered a six-inch Bowie knife and a silver-plated revolver,” Van Gorder said. “We ended up confiscating that as we always do when we find weapons ... when the guy was discharged and he found out his gun and knife wasn’t there anymore, he threatened our security officers.
“Of course, you know, carrying a concealed Bowie knife and a gun without a permit are both felonies in the State of California.”
Both weapons, he said, were turned over to the San Diego Police Department.
The task force, Van Gorder said, is designed to increase the amount of communication going on, both among hospitals experiencing violent incidents and between health providers and law enforcement.
Better communication, he said, is especially necessary in common situations such as bringing patients picked up on “5150” holds when incidents in the community cause officers to suspect someone may be a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled and unable to take care of themselves. Different officers from different departments may handle such a situation differently, with regular disagreement on what constitutes a valid involuntary hold and what does not.
“We are extraordinarily supportive of law enforcement, and they’re generally very supportive of hospitals, but there are issues and sometimes, when it comes down to managing these situations, it’s really important for us to have a liaison that we can contact literally 24/7 to be able to discuss issues that come up like threats made against hospital staff,” Van Gorder said.
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan is part of the task force and said this week that hearing the stories of health care workers who have been harmed by patients during treatment made it clear that more should be done.
She said her office does pursue reported incidents of assault, but few of those that occur are forwarded to her office for review.
“Nationally, we can see that there has been an increase in violence in hospitals against doctors, against nurses, against hospital staff,” she said. “I think what’s happening is that it’s under-reported.
“I think that, sometimes, the hospital staff thinks that, because they’re in the business of caring for people, that they have to take, take the abuse.”
The DA said that she has allocated a special prosecutor and an investigator to work on hospital violence reports. Hospitals, though, are different from almost any other kind of venue, especially because they treat people whose medical conditions may cause them to behave violently.
Many health care workers may refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, regardless of how much they were personally harmed.
Stephan said she believes that there is enough discretion available to handle such situations.
“In my mind, it’s important that these incidents are investigated and prosecuted if appropriate because, you know, then you send a clear message that the hospital workforce is something we value and we’re going to take care of,” Stephan said. “But, within the justice system, there are different, very humane ways to deal with people with, for example, mental health (issues), through behavioral health court, collaborative courts, mental health diversion.”
Takeuchi, the Sharp emergency physician, said she agrees that hospital personnel could benefit from reporting incidents and from changes to current criminal laws that make assault inside a hospital a lesser legal infraction than it is for an identical infraction out in the community. A bill proposed in 2018 that would have equalized penalties for assault on health care workers did not pass.
“Those moderate aggressions that you just kind of ignore because you kind of assume that they’re just part of the job, eventually those add up,” Takeuchi said. “They just eventually lead to bigger aggressions if they’re ignored, and so bringing them up and bringing them to light more often, hopefully, will make people realize what’s happening, and that’s how change can happen.”
Hospitals, Van Gorder noted, face particular challenges around security in that they must take all comers in their emergency departments and patient rooms, in most cases, cannot be locked.
Part of the task force’s early work, he said, is asking local police departments to make visits and recommendations on how the physical security of workers and patients can be increased without violating rules and regulations.
“We’re different than any other industry, we’re not a normal business with normal clients that come here,” Van Gorder said.”
I felt my hand making a fist just reading that.
I’m in Massachusetts
Working as a traveler for a local VNA
So basically they just firmly said ‘WE DONT PAY FOR SICK
TIME’
My boss advocated but the were pretty rude i don’t have the fight in me
The rudeness is beyond
Your column stirred up a lot of feelings for me, Theresa. First, anger at those individuals not providing direct patient care who promulgate asinine and disrespectful solutions for the challenges faced by professionals caring for sick people. Your comment about the sudden rage you experienced at the “take a cleansing breath” comment resonated deeply with me. Second, as a primary care clinician, I have always thought that providing entry level care within the health system is less a white-collar profession and more of a blue-collar one, and I am completely fine with that. I have great respect for those individuals who provide essential services, and I always felt both a kinship with folks in that sector and alienation from those members of the healthcare industry who have either forgotten their service roots or fled from them. Perhaps our current system may need to fail to achieve something better, but that prospect disregards the tremendous efforts being made by nurses, doctors, and other healthcare personnel who show up to a tough workplace environment and provide professional and, yes, loving care to their fellow human beings day in and day out... ok
Keep up this advocacy through your writing, Theresa; it is a powerful weapon in the struggle to reform our system.
Yay Teresa! Give me an amen, shout it from the rooftops!
I am one of those people who has taught wellness and resiliency programs to thousands of nurses for more than 20 years!
Every word you say in your article is true and along with you I’ve been on that bandwagon for more than 20 years. Nothing changes as far as management improving the work environment specifically with increased staffing.
When I first started introducing my wellness and stress relief programs to my local board of nursing and beyond to obtain continuing education credits, they resisted. I was shocked to hear them say that they were not interested in these kinds of programs for nurses!!!!…that I needed to position my teachings and trainings for patient care, NOT nurses. insert face palm here or your fantastic right on banging your head poster.
Fast forward, nursing leader ship organizations, finally caught on, and the word self-care and self-care programs are now ubiquitous. Then came the buzz word resiliency, and it was all about resiliency. Sigh. OK, self-care, resiliency, they are absolutely needed for a quality of life, both personal and professional, that being sad in the professional arena of medicine for both nurses and doctors who are in the front lines, the priority should be, and has always been on a safe adequately staffed Supportive environment. Alas, in my experience with thousands of nurses all over the world and the feedback that I have gotten, it is the same old, same old, did I say same old story from all of them - that this support is missing and has always been missing.
In my view, both interventions are needed -the wellness programs and resiliency teachings, although hardly a cure all, are a start from leader ship. I do know when staff attend these programs it helps, even if only a little, even if it’s only a drop of hope and help. I remember that mother Theresa when cornered to help the poorest of the poor, who leader ship (government) had abandoned, that what she was doing was only a drop in the Ocean.
Mother Theresa’s response? “ yes, this is true. However, that drop would be sorely missed.”
Theresa l hear you, l feel it. It took years to get my stress relief programs into the healthcare system for staffing. It has been years we are standing up for safe staffing. Nurses have been more vocal at this time globally than any time in history on this topic of standing up and shouting out and picketing For patient safety first! There have been baby step incremental improvements. We have a long way to go before we can walk with empowerment, instead of disempowerment, with energy, instead of depletion, and with renewed, faith, hope and love in our selfless service to humanity. I have hope. I believe. We shall overcome.
Gratitude to you for your gutsy, truthful and powerful article, you inspired me to write a comment and that is a rarity for me lol. May health, peace and love always be with you, Teresa.
P.S. absolutely adore the painting. ♥️
You had me at this line--“but I suddenly wanted to punch that person, not out of anger, but to make the point that Zen practices are useless against real threats to personal safety, whether that’s one’s own safety, or the safety of our patients. “
And CCTT is dead on. Thank you again for speaking the truth.
I have worked in nursing homes throughout my career as a nurse. I often feel that administration does not care about staff burnout and high levels of stress. It is all about the money and making sure the beds are filled. I agree with your point about administration playing an active role in making sure nurses are supported and treated fairly. I gulp down my lunch for about 10-15 minutes because there is not a place to eat your meals, unless you sit in your car. There is also not a refrigerator to keep staff food so I bring a non nutritional meal that will not go bad until I consume it. I could go on and on with all the injustices that myself and other nurses have to deal with. It is no wonder that few people are going into the healthcare field. The documentation is constantly increasing all the time as well.
I’m so so tired of this profession . I’m hanging on by a thread . The money I make is good but I have to ask is it worth my exhaustion and unhappiness . ????
I am renewing my contract and will be back to a visiting nurse 40 hours a week 7 patients a day - august 2nd
My contract will end october 28th?
I have to maybe find a different profession .
I’m am thankful for the encouraging comments and support here . Thank you 🙏