Hello! I’m Anonymous. Being a nurse for 15+ years has taught me there is no such thing as “free speech” in healthcare. Once you identify yourself by name, you cannot speak the truth. You are not allowed to post your opinions because it may be construed as “unprofessional” or “detrimental to the institution’s reputation”. If you start throwing names around of this hospital or that facility…well, you can lose your job. I have discovered that being incognito is a way for me to speak the truth without fear of losing my job. I will not discuss my identity, my place of employment or where I live. Nursing is a career that I chose, suffered through nursing school, and got bullied by senior nurses for. So, all that said, you can understand how hard I have worked to be a nurse and that is why I am Anonymous.
This blog will be me reminiscing about my glory days at the bedside and my escapades with nursing students. These topics (and everything in between) will cover a lot of ground for any nurse to relate to no matter what specialty you work. I have 2 purposes for this blog: #1 is to discuss issues/situations I have encountered in nursing, and #2 is to grow a nurse tribe where we can openly talk to each other about problems/issues/experiences we have all faced in our nursing careers. Hopefully, this nurse tribe can discover solutions to all of these age-old nursing quandaries. My dream would be to create a movement: Nursing Solution Revolution.
That Day
I burned out in August 2017. I was working in hospice. Sad thing, I absolutely loved my job and most of the people I worked with. What I didn’t like was call. If I was on call, I got called and I got called a lot. The hospice company I worked for had a practice that even when you are up all night with call, you still had to go to work the next day and do your visits. I mean, you can’t cancel hospice visits, right? Yeah, by my third night, I was done and done in a way that I felt like I was splintering apart. I called my director begging for help (which I NEVER did) but there was no help available, and she said to me, “put on your big girl panties and get it done”. Yep, I had heard that phrase before and probably said it a few times to other nurses but man, that was so not what I needed at that particular moment. I needed help, a shower, a lot of sleep and probably some therapy.
After I got off the phone, I realized how unhappy, mistreated, overworked and unappreciated I felt. I had never before felt such despair as a nurse. I worked on autopilot for the rest of my day but in the back of my mind, there was a voice screaming, “YOU ARE DONE” and “WTF HAPPENED TO ME?!?”
In the days and weeks following that day, I began to contemplate where to go, where else to work. What am I if I’m not a hospice nurse?!?! Do I go back to the hospital? No, been there, done that. Plus, I still remembered why I left that hospital (another discussion). What other specialties did I want to go in to? None. I had previously worked Med/Surg and Oncology. I loved both but I felt that I had peaked when I got into hospice. What I did realize rather quickly was that if I wanted to go anywhere else, I needed more education. I only had my ADN, so I quickly enrolled into an online BSN program. I figured I would start there until I figured out where I wanted to go. Started looking online for a new job posting to pique my interest.
Within a couple months, I quit hospice and went to work on an LTAC unit. I figured out soon thereafter that I wanted to get a teaching position in a nursing program. Hard part was I lived in a smallish town which only had 4 nursing programs and 2 out of the 4 required an MSN. So, I worked the LTAC situation then went into long-term care until I found a job in a VN program in a community college in September 2018.
Understand that while working an LTAC and long-term care, I was still dead inside and ambivalent. I really couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for either of these jobs. I tried but my mind kept reminding me that I was toast. I was a statistic, a burned-out nurse. But on a happy note, if you can’t do, you what? Teach!! It’s sad but true. It still allows you to feel like a nurse by teaching it while not really practicing. I didn’t hate nursing, I just couldn’t drum up enough care to care, you know? But teach it? I can do that with the same enthusiasm I felt when I was a hospice nurse.
How did all of that get me to this? Remember that phone call to my director? Remember how I spiraled out and went to my happy place? Yeah, I never have lost that feeling. I felt dispensable like toilet paper while a nurse should feel indispensable/confident/inspiring and all that jazz. I was used up till there was nothing left then replaced with another nurse. It’s the vicious cycle of a nurse’s position anywhere in the world. It is such a depressing thought because I was dedicated, reliable, and a badass MFer but still basically toilet paper. I kept wondering how I got to that point. How did this happen??? All along I have thought about my predicament and in retrospect, it’s a million little things that culminated on that day, in my truck, on the phone, on that road. If my sharing this helps anyone in nursing, then I feel vindicated for that loss on that day.
That’s the source of this blog: THAT day and everyday thereafter. How did it happen? How did I allow it to happen? How did I not see the signs? And most importantly, why didn’t anyone help me? Could anyone have helped? Along the way since my glorious hospice days, I have revisited memories of my nursing career, paid attention to social media, listened to all my nurse friends and watched nurses at clinical sites and there is absolutely no wonder why nurses burn out like they do. And it is getting worse. The “shelf life” of a nurse is getting shorter and shorter. There are a lot of reasons for it that I can see. There are a lot of issues in nursing that no one cares about (other than the nurses). I mean, they say they care and are there for you (we are a team, right?), but I think it’s fluff. It’s PR BS. It’s lip service. It’s practically a meme. Because of my story, I am going to say things that are my opinion and experience, and my opinions will not be popular with those in charge. Again, this is why I am Anonymous.