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New grad nurses are hardly recovered from the burnout they experienced during nursing school, which is why you’re already walking on thin ice when you first transition into your practice as a full-fledged nurse after graduating. It’s important to truly understand what burnout looks like for nurses, the signs that you are reaching a burnout point, and what you can do to prevent burnout, before it impacts your health and well being. And not to mention, your hard earned career.
In this blog article I will be covering what burnout is, what aspects of your health that it will impact, causes, and prevention strategies. You just spent 2-4 years in school leaning how to take care of other people. Your priority should always be your own health first. I know, us nurses make the worst patients.
Understanding Burnout
Burnout is defined as a state of complete mental, emotion, and physical exhaustion. Brought on by many of the stressors that come with becoming a nurse. Such as the long-hours worked, the pressures and mental exhaustion that comes with the quick-decision making that needs to be done every day, and the strain that is brought on by caring for patients who do not often have good outcomes for their health.
Some of the symptoms of burnout include…
- Feeling constantly over worked and exhausted
- Frequent mood swings and irritability
- Compassion levels feeling diminished
- Decreased empathy toward patients
- Increase in absenteeism
- Overwhelming levels of anxiety, sometimes even panic attacks
- Difficulty concentrating on tasks
- Feeling unappreciated for all of the hard work that you do
- Decreased immunity to infections
Any nurse is at risk for experiencing burn out, or likely even has and has not realized it. New grad nurses are most at risk for this, as they are so excited to dive in head first into their first nursing job, learn and do everything they possibly can, and of course make some of that hard earned money. New nurses are not only being flooded with tons and tons of new information, but also now learning the physical toll that the job will take on you shift after shift.
Health Impacts
Burnout directly impacts all aspect of a nurses health. Their mental. physical, and emotional well being is at risk to be affected by burn out if the signs are not paid attention to. This is why it’s so important for new grads as well as seasoned nurses to be aware of the signs of burnout and be willing to take action to care for themselves before it can cause too much harm.
Physical
Chronically high stress levels will wear down a personal physical health no matter what job roll they work in. New grad nurses who are experiencing burn out may be experiencing some of the following symptoms, and not even realize that they are due to burnout.
Trouble Sleeping: A nurse who is experiencing burn out will notice that their quality of sleep is rather poor. Either due to insomnia or frequent waking throughout the night. Poor sleep leads to other problems such as chronic fatigue, brain fog, and irritability. Just to name a few problems that come with low quality sleep.
High Blood Pressure: Being under constant high stress levels can lead to hypertension, and later all of the issues that can come with having high blood pressure. Such as heart strain and headaches.
Musculoskeletal Problems: It’s no secret that working in the medical field, the hospital especially, can lead to sore muscles. Even under the best conditions. These aches, pains, and possible injuries can be far worse when burnout hits. Burnout increases muscle tension and bad posture habits. Not to mention poor attention to proper body mechanics when lifting and bending.
Weakened Immune System: The more stress a person is allowing their body to take on, the weaker their immune system can become. Leading them to become sick more frequently and have a harder time fighting off infections.
Mental
A nurses mental health will be impacted just as heavily, if not even more so, when burn out begins taking effect.
Compassion Fatigue: Compassion fatigue comes from a reduced ability to empathize with patients. This is a nurses ability to connect with and care for their patients. Burnout compromises this in nurses.
Increased Depression and Anxiety Levels: Anxiety and depression levels increase significantly with burnout. Characterized by feelings of disinterest, hopelessness, and nonfulfillment.
Absolute Emotional Exhaustion : Feelings of being completely emotionally drained and overwhelmed are huge red flags of burnout setting in.
Crippling Brain Fog: Burnout leads to cognitive impairment such as trouble focusing, poor memory, and difficulty making decisions.
Common Causes of Burnout in New Grad Nurses
Burnout isn’t just specific to the nursing profession, but nurses certainly are a high risk population. Especially after the COVID 19 pandemic turned the nursing world upside down and pushed thousands of nurses out of the profession. Either by choice or necessity. While the rest have been left to work hard to pick up the pieces. Which is why it’s so importing to understand the causes of burn out so you can be self aware as a health care professional and recognize when you’ve put yourself in an environment that can lead you straight to burnout.
Overwhelming workload: Between staffing shortages and unrealistic expectations of certain hospital units, the amount of weight a nurse is expected to carry can become overwhelming quickly.
Lack of work-life balance: Nurses may not be married to their profession like a doctor might be, but the hours that are worked (especially if you are a nurse in a hospital working 3 12 hour shifts) can really throw the work-life balance scales off.
Inadequate support from colleagues or supervisors: Sometimes, even when you do try and do the right thing and report honest concerns to your management, it can fall upon deaf ears. Leaving nurses continuing down the path to burnout.
High patient acuity: If you find yourself with more total-care patients than ones who are independent on a regular basis, then the way that the unit is looking at acuity isn’t for the benefit of their nurses. Taking care of high acuity patients for 12 hours can be absolutely draining. Physically and mentally.
Dealing with challenging patients or families: Of course, this is something that “comes with the job”, but that doesn’t make it any less soul-sucking and exhausting.
Strategies for Preventing Burnout
Time Management: Managing your time at work is just as important as your time away from work. At work you should be prioritizing thing such as taking lunch breaks and leaving on time. Not staying late every single shift to help, as much as you might want to. Time management also includes allowing yourself time to rest on your days off rather than trying to constantly be on the go and be productive every second of every day you have off.
Self Care: You work so hard for the money you’re making in every paycheck, don’t feel bad spending some of it on yourself! Mani-pedi, monthly massage, go to your favorite store, get that cold brew, take some time off and use your PTO to focus on self care.
Establishing a Support Network: Building a network means having friends at work or outside of work, who will hold you accountable for taking your breaks/call you out when they see you over working yourself. Family is also a good support network to lean into at times as well. Creating a weekly routine with someone who you trust and are close to, that involves you and that person doing something relaxing and non-work related can really make a world of difference.
Setting Boundaries: It’s important to know how to say no-to picking up extra shifts, covering other people, and knowing when it’s okay to tell your boss no. You’re allowed to say you can’t pick up that extra shift and work over time every week. And on that note, you don’t owe anyone an explanation on why you can’t do that either.
Advocating for Yourself: New nurses fall victim to the pressure of wanting to excel and prove their worth as a new member of the team. And don’t see those moments when they should be advocating for themselves – too heavy of a patient assignment, too many tasks being piled on their shoulders, etc. Because they aren’t entirely aware of the boundaries and what is “normal” quite yet. But it’s important to recognize when things are becoming to heavy for you personally and have the courage to say something about it to your supervisors.
Conclusion
Burn out is more serious that you may think. It’s not just feeling little extra tired. Burn out takes a toll on the entire body, mind included. Blood pressure increased, sleep quality plummets, everything aches, headaches become frequent, anxiety levels spike, and brain fog becomes a constant state of being.
As a nurse, it’s important to recognize your limits and when they are being pushed. Yes, you became a nurse because you love to help people so you are doing just that. But that doesn’t mean letting your own needs fall to the wayside in the process. Use this guide to better understand what burnout looks like, what can trigger it, and how you can stop it in its tracks and prioritize yourself.
Note from Nurse Kate: It took me writing this blog post to realize that I have been falling into a state of burn out for some time now and didn’t even recognize it. Until it was in black and white in front of my face. So I will certainly be taking my own advice and prioritizing my own health and well being.
I work a PRN role, which means I don’t have any PTO to utilize. But I’ve already decided to adjust my work schedule to my own needs, even if that means losing some income for some time. Because I need to prioritize my own health before I can focus on caring for others.
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