Burnout

I just read something that burnout takes years to overcome. I laughed to myself as I thought about nurses during the pandemic.

Let me explain that this profession works hard and plays hard. We work and our job for money and then most of us are caregivers in our personal life… which means we work when we aren’t at our job for money. Burnout, you say?

During the pandemic, nurses were working extra long hours for money to leave work and lots of times not even able to go in their own houses to hug loved ones because they were convinced they would pass along covid to the ones they love. That made the timeclock never end. You never get to clock out when that’s the case. Families paid that price

Those of us who were fortunate to go home and enter back into their families for a few precious hours never were truly present. For leadership, I spent a lot of time on the phone and or at the hospital. My family paid that precious price too.

Now we talk about empathy fatigue and burnout. We ask ourselves why nurses are leaving the field. It’s not just about CMS forcing a vaccine into us. It’s about that being the final straw. It’s about how it will take years for nurses to recover from being burned out from the entire pandemic that was wrought with fear.

Conserve PPE. We don’t have enough N95 masks. We don’t have enough gloves. And the all consuming fear. Not fear for ourselves getting sick, but our family members. Because that is 1 more straw to add to the load.

Burnout, you say, takes years. Nurses don’t have years. We have licensure to keep up. Mouths to feed and loved ones to care for.

Pay that now the money people say “is going back to normal”… translation… welcome back to being undervalued AND burned out.

Years. Ha! We don’t have years and now with pay rates going back to their devalued normal, you think burnout will get better? Think again.

What did you do?

Remember where you were and how you felt watch that scene? Trying to explain it to children who were old enough to somewhat understand the monstrosity of human hate… those same children are the WORLD CHANGING ADVOCATES of today. Those same children know the negativity that came in the aftermath. We Remember the unity, but do you remember the profiling? The prejudice toward people who even looked middle Eastern? I do. I also remember wondering why I feared people because of a profile?

And here’s the thing. Gen Xers and older… we created a generation of awareness. And now collectively this generation is belittled because WE TOLD THEM TO STAND UP FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVE. Oh, I guess you meant, as long as it’s YOUR belief too? Well… as you remember today. As you think about unity. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO PERPETUATE UNITY?