Surviving Nurse Job Challenges

Nurses have to be flexible in their field of work in order to survive nurse job challenges needed to render proper and effective patient care. However, there are times when you feel you can't control things any longer, like this situation:

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“What? You have to keep going. You can’t quit. You’re needed. You’re fantastic at what you do.”

“No, it’s too hard. I’m exhausted. There’s too much to do and never enough time. I’m fighting on every front and I have no more fight left. I’m tired of being responsible, tired of doing it all and doing it well. Really, there’s barely time even to do a lousy job at the required basics.”

My friend was struggling with her nursing job and home relationships. I didn’t like what I was hearing, but I understood. I’d previously slid down a similar slimy slope.

There were no grab bars, no traction, no hay bales to cushion the landing along that slope. It was all downhill, like a runaway sled careening down an icy hilltop.

Has your sled slipped down that same slippery slope of overwhelmingness?

I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit to anyone, most especially myself. I’d wanted to quit my nurse job in the past, I’ve wanted to quit my own business, I’ve wanted to quit as a patient, I’ve wanted to quit watching loved ones as patients.

I’ve wanted to quit. But it’s been seldom when I’ve followed through on that desire.

There’s much I have to learn, but this I know: the ‘how’ of how we, nurses keep going when we can’t keep going, might be found in a simpler answer than we realize.The how lies in hope. Consciously or unconsciously, we hang on to hope. We hope for a better day, situation, outcome. We know it can be better than it is. We wait for the day when it is just that. We do what we can to bring it on, and if there’s nothing we can do, we patiently plow through the days until the sun glints through the clouds.

Along the way, we hold on to the hope of the heartfelt personal and nursing relationships of our lives, the intrinsic value and purpose our relationships and work bring us, and the unexpected humor that catches us off-guard.

There is fun in almost everything, including overworked, underappreciated, ‘get me the bleep out of here’ workdays. During some pastjobs, I had been known to keep going merely by telling myself that the workplace, in all its messed up unglory, was there simply to entertain me. And not only that, but I was paid to be an interactive audience! I silently voiced a ‘bravo’ for true-to-form stellar performances from colleagues, administration and customers.

I could choose to be either annoyed or amused by their an

tics and interactions with me. When I chose to become detached and amused, a day in my nursing job was not as bleak as it had been. There was reason to smile. From there, I could pass on the good humor, so to speak, to others and be re-energized by it myself. It might be an unorthodox coping mechanism, but sometimes unorthodox is what survival requires. Surviving challenges as a nurse can be difficult but if you try to take it easy , you will be at the top of the game.

You can so do this, too. Bravo, you!