What if Burnt Out Nurses Raised Our Voices in a Way That Noone Could Ignore?
Burnt Out Nurses are screaming at the tops of our lungs but I am afraid noone with any real power is listening.
Nurses are saying that we are done being taken advantage of by the For-Profit Healthcare System. We are done killing ourselves slowly for a system that clearly doesn’t care for us or our patients.
We are some of the most empathic people in world and it takes alot to get a Nurse to the point where we are willing to put our needs above others.
Yet, that is where burnt out nurses have been pushed.
It has been crystal clear to me for years that noone is coming to save us so we have to save ourselves.
Burnt Out Nurses are not new for 2024, it has been building up in Nursing for at least 20 years.
Do you remember that first day you entered the hospital with your bright & clean RN badge hanging from your scrubs by nothing but the dream of making a difference in other people’s lives?
We just want to take care of people, we don’t even especially want to take care of ourselves.
That is the root of the problem.
Nurses like us have existed on pure idealism and helping others since our beginnings.
We have become shell-shocked soldiers in an invisible war against chronic illness and burnout.
Healthcare is broken, and the insanity we see everyday makes us want to numb to our pain.
But what if the Way to Change The System is to Nurse Yourself First?
Have we held the key to a healthier future the whole time? Not just for ourselves and patients but for the Healthcare system in general?
My own descent into despair was fueled by the same chronic illnesses I see engulfing others today. (I was early to the party because I gave everything to critical care and my sick mother, which left nothing for me)
As burnout gnawed at my soul, I withdrew deeper into myself. I stopped caring about my needs and started numbing myself with various distractions that grew into addictions just to find some peace between responsibilities.
It was a feedback loop of misery. Nothing could help me but me and I was busy giving all of my care to other people.
I don’t know how in that darkness, I found a spark – a flicker of defiance against my suffering started to grow.
I became a warrior, not just against my numbness, but for my wellbeing.
The answer, I discovered, wasn’t another life hack or trying to squeeze every ounce of energy out of my blood dry turnip.
I found it in the most basic, yet often neglected, aspects of life: how much of our time I spent taking care of myself.
Over the last 5 years I have written extensely about what worked and what didn’t. I experimented constantly, kept great notes and developed frameworks to fall back on when I wasn’t strong enough to do what needed to be done. Nurse Myself First.
How do you spend your free time?
Do you cook healthy food routinely? Do you have healthy hobbies? Do you find things to do that get you outside and moving your body that gives you a boost in self esteem? Do you feel like you can point to something you accomplished today (besides helping someone else, that you wanted to do) and feel proud to say “I did that”?
Please, hear me out. Do what is in your heart to do and ignore the rest.
This is what most mentally and physically healthy people do, but I realized that nurses have a hard time with this. If every nurse talks about their struggles, shares openly and vulnerably, I believe it can encourage more people to take control of what is important to them and ignore what others tell you to care about. That frees up tons of time that can be spent doing the things you didn’t think possible.
You only have control over what you do, not over what other people do. By spending your time on things that you can change, ignoring or accepting what you can’t change then you begin to Nurse Yourself.
The Serenity Prayer is:
- “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”
- “The courage to change the things I can”
- “And the wisdom to know the difference”
The problem is numbing ourselves keeps us from every examining what we want to spend out time doing. We stay in that comfortably numb place for so long that we become critically numbed, or full of despair.
How do you start when all you want to do is numb yourself with distractions or addictions that make us feel better?
Most problems are made worse when we hide from them. We never really start doing anything real. We’ll learn plenty, but we’ll start to numb all of those thoughts, anxieties and fears that we’re having instead of just doing something.
Once you start assertively doing what you want and need, you will start to feel good about yourself. This will cause you to get curious as your brain fog and depression lifts, you will start to feel more energized and enjoyed living life again.
That is how you start to see changes, and other people will see those changes too and get curious.
What Power Do Nurses Have over a system that is rigged?
Nurses, we have seen the multitudes of ways that the body and the human spirit can be destroyed and we know the devastating consequences of poor life choices.
It scares us all to death that we can end up like that too. Yet, we are setting ourselves up to suffer the same consequences because we are numbing ourselves into a self-fullfilling prophecy.
We would rather help everyone else overcome their poor lifestyle choices instead of facing our own.
We’ve become bystanders to a silent epidemic, watching as pain medication, ultraprocessed junk food, sugar and hustle culture were marketed to us as not just normal, but preferred.
Nurses and Doctors became morally injured and burned out when we were unable to do what we know is right because today’s system has made it impossible to do everything, for everyone, all at once by one person.
The answer is for every one of us to be in charge of what you will and will not do because you are the one that will have to live with your choices.
Enough of us will be able to make a big enough difference in our health that it can at least add quality to our lives. The difference made could be between a life of disability vs living into your 80s & 90s in a way you would want to live.
The greedy profit seekers are wreaking havoc on the health of everyone but the rich and educated that can afford to buy all the products they are selling plus have personal trainers, dieticians, and helpers at their beck and call.
In other words, the wealthy know they will be okay, so they have no personal benefit to make themselves lose money by changing the healthcare currently works.
At the same time the rest of us know we will suffer as Healthcare for the rest of us steadily crumbles over the next decade. The volumn of chronically ill people will only rise until enough individuals realize that it is up to them to try to fix themselves, the younger that realization the better.
The only power Nurses have over Healthcare policy is what we will or will not do. That is it.
It is our licenses at stake not the financial or business people that set us up to fail.
If you feel it is not safe, then you have to have the confidence to draw the line? As more nurses become assertive and confidently follow through on their principles then the less the powerful will be able to bully us into accepting assignments that puts our patients and our morals at stake.
That is a good thing for healthcare in the long run.
What if Nurses raised our collective voices right now?
What if everyone was empowered to take control of their health, starting with the most fundamental act of life – how we use our time and what we eat?
Imagine the ripple effect on Healthcare if everyone (who wanted to) had the time, money and energy to cook healthy food for themselves, everyday because we were not forced to choose between Nursing and 12 hours shifts.
How do you cook yourself healthy, fiber-rich veggies everyday, instead of stopping for take out when you haven’t taken care of yourself in 14 or 15 hours?
You don’t.
There is no amount of willpower that can overcome the kind of mental and physical exhaustion that is caused when you put aside your needs to fully care for people that are sicker than you can even imagine for 13 hours a day, and do that 3 or 4 times a week, every week, for years.
Unless something fundamentally changes with the way the nursing job is structured those who continue to sign up to do it will burnout at alarming rates as society becomes more and more structured and confusing to the average person.
Burnt out nurses who have historically been employed as frontline hospital workers, will continue to subconsciously agree to slowly kill ourselves just to show up to work.
Just ask any night nurse that ended up disabled and chronically ill or dead prematurely.
“Ten years or more of rotating night shift work was associated with 20% decreased odds of healthy aging.”
It is nuts that we put up with this for a few dollars more an hour. Why doesn’t OSHA have a problem with the way Nurses are treated on the job when there has been so many studies that link the job to health risks.
I didn’t realize any of this when I checked myself into rehab to save my life almost 9 years ago.
It took many years of recovery for my eyes to open and see as clearly as I do today.
Once You See It, You’re Done Numbing Yourselves to Reality.
Nurses are realizing at increasing speed that they are hurting themselves to help the rich profit off of ours’ and our patients’ misery.
More nurses are leaving bedside than ever before, some are leaving nursing entirely.
Many nurses are reinventing themselves in different jobs in their surrounding communities, online and even becoming self-employed as advocates, educators and coaches.
The goal as I see it is to create a world where the bottom 90% of the wealth doesn’t see chronic illness, despair, metabolic disease, autoimmune, dementia and arthritis as inevitable.
Today, I hear people approaching their 60s and 70s think that arthritis pain is part of aging while the top 10% lives into their 90s healthy and active.
The only healthcare policies and regulations that would help can not get passed because there is no reason for them to do anything that will hurt the bottom line of their business so people will continue to suffer.
Once people see what is truly happening that is against the publics best interest it will fuel a grassroots movement where people adopt a Nurse Yourself First mindset. Once you realize that nothing substantial will change unless they have to respond to the actions of the nurses on the ground.
I’m Convinced This Fight Begins & Ends with Our Individual Health.
Whether we are already living as Burnt Out Nurses or just starting down the path, you have to fix yourself because noone else can do it for you.
Everyday choices we make, aka (selfcare), are the secret to doing this.
But this is not the kind of self-care that most people tell you to chase. I am not talking about the pleasurable, or numbing kind of self-care that makes you feel good about doing the same thing again tomorrow that hurt you today.
That means you have to design the way you live your life.
So, let’s show the world the true power of a nurse – a warrior for wellness, an advocate for true health.
- You need systems that support you, not exploit you.
- You need time to cook, time and energy to do things that make your daily life something that you love again instead of hate. You need the knowledge of good food vs bad food.
- You need a place where you are free to speak your mind and be yourself without fear. Make connections and a plan for a better future alongside other caring and empathetic nurses going through the same thing. (Sign Up Below)
It’s time to reclaim your power; assertively redesign your life around how you want to live and become as healthy as possible, starting now.
