A&E nurse: am I on the road to burnout and destruction?
|
Version 0 of 1. At somewhere in my mid-20s, I wonder how I am going to survive another 40 years working as a nurse in A&E. Am I on the road to burnout and destruction? During my training, I had a brief lecture on burnout and ways to deal with stress so as to prevent the onset of emotional and physical exhaustion. One of the suggestions made by the Royal College of Nursing is to discuss how I am feeling with supportive friends and family. Imagine this – I come home and my boyfriend asks: “How was your day at work?” If I were to reply honestly, my answer would be something along the lines of: “Well, my first task of the day before I had time to eat breakfast was to respond to a cardiac arrest, performing chest compressions on an overweight patient; I broke out in a sweat that rendered my shower half an hour earlier useless. While this was going on, another patient was thrashing about on their trolley, confused, ripping off their monitoring, lashing out because they were recovering from a seizure. The 89-year-old lady next door needed the commode every five minutes because her dementia was causing her to forget that she’d just been on it. As I didn’t want to upset her further, I assisted her repeatedly. Related: Paramedic: most patients we take into A&E don’t need to be there “Inbetween running from my post seizure patient to stop them falling off the trolley and harming themselves, and the 89-year-old lady, I had to treat a young girl who had taken a life threatening dose of heroin and drunk a considerable amount of alcohol. She was shouting profanities at me and threatening to kill someone, which in turn was upsetting the 89-year-old. I then found five minutes to eat my breakfast before returning to tell the family of my cardiac arrest that their husband, father and son had died at the age of 57. How was your day?” Unfortunately, this is never how I respond when I come home from work. I don’t expect someone else to have to live through the day I have just had. My response is usually: “I’ve had a busy day, where’s the wine?” Burnout seems inevitable. If I’m not at work, I’m thinking about work. It invades my dreams, my conversations and my attempts to unwind. Aside from the odd article from whichever union you have joined advising about ways of dealing with stress, there is a fundamental insufficiency in mental health support for healthcare staff. Related: I faced burnout working as a GP in the NHS – I had to stop The ever-increasing demand and workload for nurses will undoubtedly lead to a loss of control and burnout. We are legally, ethically and morally obliged to provide safe and quality care to every patient we see. With the increasing risk of burnout, we are putting ourselves, our patients and the profession as a whole at risk. As more nurses are retiring earlier, the workforce is losing experienced professionals. At the A&E department where I work, there has been a huge exodus of nurses. We’ve got an influx of new and inexperienced people, which puts a huge strain on the rest of us. They can’t do as much as the ones who have been there longer and it’s tough work. It doubles our workload. But everyone has to start somewhere, and so we support them. Debriefing sessions when a shift has been particularly traumatic, or praise for staff when we have dealt with stressful situations, would be beneficial – but management does little to help. They are unsympathetic and half of them still don’t know my name when I’ve worked in the department for two years. Someone has even clicked at me before to get my attention. Related: New Year’s Eve in A&E: drunk partygoers add to my workload Taking a few minutes at the end of a shift to praise us on a matter that we handled well would be a huge way to boost morale. A&E nursing is no easy feat and we need more support. Sometimes sharing your day’s stresses with someone who doesn’t work in A&E is helpful as they can provide an outsider’s listening ear. Conversely, often the best people to share your stories with are those who work in the same environment. I try to remember that I am only human, accept that I work in a stressful environment and constantly remind myself that it’s probably not going to get any easier, so to just do what I can. That’s all anyone can ask. If you would like to write a blogpost for Views from the NHS frontline, read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing healthcare@theguardian.com. Join us for an online discussion on Friday 16 January to explore why there is an A&E crisis and possible solutions. Are you a member of our online community? Sign up to the Healthcare Professionals Network – for free – to receive weekly email updates on policy and best practice in the sector, as well as exclusive offers. |