Stress can compromise our ability to navigate our busy healthcare careers on a daily basis. If left untreated, feelings aren't expressed, or the difficult situations we see every day are left buried deep within us, the results can range from challenging physical and emotional symptoms to the slow, downward implosion of your successful healthcare career.
Addictions, diversion of drugs and unprofessional conduct are just a few symptoms of a field that carries with it an immense amount of stress. The need to think and act quickly in fast-paced healthcare environments is sometimes not easy for clinical teams faced with the present challenges found in healthcare - but it is necessary. The Jones report (2005) stated that when a hospital loses a nurse, the cost to the hospital ranges from $61,000 - 67,000 per nurse. When professionals develop addictions, this does not include the cost of medications stolen or diverted or the unknown cost to the patients in their care and the effects on the cohesiveness of the clinical team. Most importantly, there are immense effects on the physical and emotional health, family relationships and career of the professional involved.
Here are 10 ways to cope with a stressful healthcare career:
- Take care of yourself: make sure you get enough sleep and food to eat. If it's 10:00am and you think you would like some coffee and then 7 hours later you realize you still haven't had that cup of coffee and you've had to go to the bathroom for the last 4 hours, this is not taking care of yourself.
- Keep the lines of communication open with the members of your team. You are all "in it" together; if you have had a difficult case or multiple codes, debrief. Talk about the effect the day has had upon you and what you have learned about yourself as a person or a practitioner. Express your feelings as 'stuffing them' eventually leads to additional stress, burnout or compassion fatigue.
- Be aware of your defenses: the way you manage your stress. I don't know of any nurse or physician who walks into a code room and says "eewwwww blood!”- you see overwhelming stuff everyday right? It's our defenses that allow us to go from day to day navigating the emotions that we have. There are appropriate times to talk about how you respond to situations and inappropriate times. Also important to remember is that we have defenses to manage our feelings. Our patients and families are often emotional, as they have to manage the stress of their family members illness and a lot of acronyms they may not understand in an area that is very overstimulating to them. They may interpret our defenses as uncaring or insensitive. Counterbalance this by asking if they have questions regarding care or if they require additional information or support.
- If you are precepting a new nurse or graduate, they may not know how to manage the stress of a fast-paced healthcare area. The better you are at "modeling" appropriate coping strategies, the easier your preceptee will adjust to the challenges at hand. Review cases clinically but also take a few seconds to 'check in' and make sure they are handling the pace, patients and families and teamwork from an interpersonal level as well.
- Do you have gobs of accrued hours to use for vacation? You're not alone. Usually we hear: "there's no one to cover for me" or "it's too busy now - I'll take it later". What usually happens is you either cash out the hours or lose them. Use them! Even if it's only to take a few days away, it's rest that you need. Have fun, relax and take care of yourself.
- If you're at the grocery store and the overhead signal goes off and you're looking for a crash cart instead of listening about the spill in isle 4, you may be working too hard.
- Pay attention to the way your team is coping with the stress they have. If you notice a colleague hasn't shown up since a code a few days ago, make sure you check in with them or have someone give them a call and see how they are doing. The more cohesive and collaborative your team is, the easier it is to check in with them when they are stressed too.
- If you or a colleague has developed an addiction, get help. Seek treatment or contact your employee assistance professional. They can refer you to a program. You've worked hard to get to where you are in your career, you've gained an immense amount of experience in interacting with patients and families - do not throw it away. Get the help you need. Find a treatment facility by checking here or here.
- If you notice a colleague has developed a problem, talk to them. Confronting a problem is not easy for a lot of people but ignoring it all together may have more consequences. Our colleagues may become defensive if they are not ready to address the problem. This can be avoided by using "I statements" such as "I'm concerned about how you are doing - is everything okay?" or "I was concerned that I didn't see you after that tough code the other day, it was pretty overwhelming huh...” Using 'feeling' words such as "concerned” "overwhelmed" or “stressed out” usually carry more weight then "thinking" statements.
- Need more information or help - we offer a free newsletter on managing stress and enhancing communication at www.RN-coach.com (see the sign up form which requires a confirmation by e-mail as we don't like spam either). Your information will remain confidential and will not be disclosed to anyone.
Most importantly, taking care of yourself and taking care of your team will lead to enhanced care for patients and families.
