Yes I did,  ever since I was a Hospital tech for over seven years,  and working a homecare worker, and  LTC, it is from all the stress, of not making ends meat,  from working as CNA, and all the back strains, and shoulder injuries. I am rested now, I  feel better now out there knowing that I have God giving me the strength to fullfill my dream as working as nurse. God Bless!!

My name is Karen and I work on a busy Bone Marrow Transplant unit. I graduated from Nursing School in 1993 but worked breifly before taking 6 yrs off to raise kids. I've been back in the work force since 2003 and Im struggling with severe burnout. I don't know what to do. I love the people I work with and I love my patients. I get a lot of positive feedback from my boss and my co-workers (patients and families as well). However, I dread going to work. I can hardly sleep the night before I go in and I only work two 12hr shifts a week!! I don't know how to get back my love of nursing-I don't know where it went. My husband even took me to Hawaii for a week in December but taking time off didn't help. I don't want to switch specialties, I love my Bone Marrow patients and am always so inspired by them. Anyone go through this and come out?

I am a lpn since 1991 when I feel stress out. I take personal days and unwind. I have worked in burn care for 9 years,clinic and geratrics.and was a emt for 24 years. I love taking care of people in need. It is stressfull but hang in there it is very rewarding

I have been an R for 7 years and the  docs who run the office I worked in just pushed and pushed us so hard I lost controll and  just QUIT my job a week ago when I came to realize what I did I asked or more so begged for my job back they said no. So I screwed up my career and my life no money Do nurses have any support system out there? Or do we just keep taking the crap dished out to us. I really worked hard and was there for 4 years.

 I have been an RN for 23 years.  Everywhere I have ever worked I have been told I have worked more overtime than anyone in their history.  I love nursing most of the time.  I divorced and raised 3 boys during this time.  I have worked every area of nursing except home health and oncology.  I saved that for family members.  I have worked up to 5 jobs at one time to put my kids thru college.  I thank GOD for my nursing liscense so I could support my family and now be able to take care of my elderly parents.  My dad is on hemodialysis and we do dialysis at home.  We have done this for 7 years.  We now run him every other day and I work 1 full time job and 2 part time jobs.  If you start getting burned out change nursing areas!!!!  If you work in a large hospital go rural!!  More fun, more personal with your patients, more family environment!!!  My only other recommendations are learn the word NO, realize they will only remember you for a short time if you quit, and develop a sense of humor because health care now compared to 20 years ago SUCKS!!!!! some things technology has not improved due to us becomming socialized medicine whether we want to admit it or not.  Apparently med school is teaching "cook book medicine" now days instead of individualized care.

After 17 years of nursing, I had to take time off.  I am now returning after 7 years.

I am burned out not because of my job, but the people in charge. Being in the military can be frustrating because you have to deal with the chain of command. It is hard to voice true frustrations without so kind of retaliation. It is good to have options and always retain the option to opt out if you feel like quitting.

We definantly need to remember to take care of ourselves first. Something I never do and don't know how to start. Full time lpn job, rn school and a toddler and husband to take care off. (who apparantly doesn't know how to do housework)  Sometimes I feel like running away! So then I take out my anger and frustration on my husband. Who has no idea why and then I feel even worse for doing that. I put in for some vacation time and plan to do NOTHING with those days off. Maybe I will rent a hotel room at the coast and just go be by myself for awhile. Sounds amazing. YOu know what? I think I really will do that!! Oh wait I am to scared to drive 12 hours to a place I have never been all by myself. Feeling like I am lost stresses me out. Any one have a better idea?

I have been an LVN (2 Years) and then an RN ( over 20 years).Communist theory is appropriate to this topic. I am not an Communist. However, I find Communist theory very interesting, incisive, and informative sometimes.It states that if a profession requires a great deal of training while, at the same, time is very unpleasant (such as in nurisng), in a trully free enterprise and competitive work environement, the same would mandate a high salarly and good working conditions. However, in a "monopoly capitalistic" environment, in order to maximize short term profits, the work force (the profession) is destroyed in order to maximize these profits.  The labor force is "monopolized" such as to prevent true competition and free enterprise in the labor force from occuring.Further individuals and groups which attempt to bring about professional reform such as to improve salaries and working conditions, are intimidated ( inclusive of personal insult, slander, black listing, and etc.) , personally insulted, and discriminated against in employment to prevent the same. In the long run, however, this communist theory holds that these "monopoly capitalistic" practices result in severe nursing (labor) shortages. I don't know where the future lies with regard to the nursing shortage. However, the aforementioned communist theory does not bode well for the nursing shortage nor the nursing profession.

Absolutely! And right now I'm so close to becoming a Wal-Mart greeter .  I am a Radiology Nurse and in the last 2 months my Nurse Coordinator left for a better position, one the of per diems took a 32 hour a week position at our Cancer Center and can only pick up a day here and there (she used to do 32 hours/week with me, and the other per diem left to take a 40 hour/week job as a Nurse Manager at a Health Center.  So I'm it. My 32 hr/wk position has turned into 45 hrs/wk and I got called in Friday night at 7 pm to assist with an abscess drainage. A new nurse coordinator is starting today, but she will be working two weeks at our other campus and a new per diem starts next week.   I have to train both of them since neither one has any Radiology Nurse background.  I am feeling frustrated, tired, and angry.  Hope I don't so anything rash.....as I have been known to do.  Thanks for listening.

I am very tired of staff nursing. I am a registered nurse with almost 20 years of experience. What I am doing to work through my burnout is to do what my passion is. I am very interested in Holistic Nursing. I now am working on a business where I will be working totally for myself. I am studying aromatherapy, and I teach classes on wellness. I love this! I have information if others would like to know what I am doing. This is very fulfilling. I have set a goal to be doing this fulltime, and not be in the hospital setting in about one year. It is so nice to work from a prevention standpoint, and not a death and dying one.

Yes I suffered from burn out. I have been and LVN for 24 years. I was working with mental health and substance abuse clients. I think what pushed me over the edge was when I lost my dad to diabetes and ETOH abuse. No matter how much I pleaded with him he wouldn't stop. He was only 62 y/o when he died. I watched my clients do the revolving door in and out of rehab and get to doing really well and back on their medications and then something pushed them and down they went.

I also got tired of fighting the insurance and medicare/medicaid system. We have people out there needing help that can't get it and it is like no big deal to these companies or government. Dr's have caused alot of this cause of the way they operate and in the long run we are the ones suffering cause we are helpless as to helping our clients.

I took and stepped away from nursing for the last 7 years and have been on the road driving a big rig. I got to see alot and experience things that I have never seen before. No matter where I was in the country it was the same with nursing. Always not enough yet they don't won't to pay us for the work we do and all the overtime we put in. I am looking to go back to nursing now and see if I can make a difference and even if I help one person with a need I feel I have accomplished something.

Let's keep the faith and keep pulling for each other. God Bless you all.

I was just there! I was doing agency and mostly getting floor nursing shifts. I 'd been an LPN for 20 years and an RN for about 5 years. Going back to the floor was like a step back for me. I needed the money, so I tried to keep my chin up. Unfortunately, being agency, meant getting the crappiest assignments and sickest pt's. Sometimes the charge nurses helped, but more often, they made my job harder.

I ended up telling the agency to find me a palce to recertify my PALS(already had my ACLS) and get me to ICU or ER ASAP!. I refused to work any more floor shifts. My husband was pissed, but oh well! He doesn't know how horrible things were. I knew I was getting burnt when I ended up yelling at the pyxis"I need help!, I'm overwhelmed!" The charge nurse pulled me aside and said pt's family members couls hear me. I told her they weren't stupid, and could see I was being pulled 50 ways at one time.

I have since gotten ICU and ER shifts, and have not felt this way there. I realize that the floor just aint my thing. I'll do it once in a while, but only now and then in times of desperation.

     People don't have a clue about the reality of the amount of stress nurses deal with every single day. They don't have a clue about what a crapshoot going to the hospital is now ... it could be an ok day .... or it could be the kind of day they'll be lucky to survive ... depending on the seriousness of their problem, and how many sick calls there are that day or how well staffed the floor is in general.

     Nursing is in a really bad way and has been for many, many, years, so wouldn't you think it would have improved by now? It is such a mess! Getting worse every year.

     I worked as a DON for an agency (one of my attempts to salvage doing nursing on some level, but I fought with the Corporate ludicrous use and abuse of nurses too), but I discovered while there, that nurses were burning out much, much, sooner, than they use too. ... I'm talking,  these young women were burning out in 5 - 7 years! Where at least it used to take 15 - 20 years!

     Acuity HIGH, expectations of patients, familes and managers ... HIGH,  ... staffing ... LOW. We have been talking about safety and patient : staff ratios ... for YEARS. Some states where nurses finally did something about it ... are beginning to listen ... HELLO .... how many years????? How many states????? Its unbelievable!

     Actually, what it is ...is big business. They discovered many years ago, that they could push nurses around all they wanted. They could just make their lives on their units as miserable as anything, and that nurses as a group were never going to band together and empower themselves to accomplish what they needed to have happen, ... and as individuals? Lord, it was so easy to play on their kindness, and compassion, ... make them think the patients will suffer if they try to change things for the better ..... they won't make a peep. (They will gripe and complain amongst themselves, but they won't be agents of change. ....it's not in their make-up. So they are easy targets.

      After 35+ years, doing every conceivable aspect of nursing that I thought I could tolerate, (but couldn't) I can't even stand to go visit someone in a hospital, or Rehab, or NH, ... I have a visceral reaction!

     I am totally alternative medicine now, ....... increasingly so over the last 10 - 12 years.

     The only Western medicine I would have anything to do with is acute care. ... If I break a leg, or God forbid was in an accident, ... get me to the ER, perhaps to an excellent Trauma Team somewhere, and give me good drugs to keep me out of pain in the acute phase .... .

   ...Otherwise? I want nothing to do with Western medicine.

Wow, sorry to hear you burned out in peds onc.  I am doing a lot of writing  write now. Good therapy for me. Hey, I see you live in Chapel Hill.  Fellow nurses. I am in Rocky Mount. I do adult onc...