NursingZen

Recently I read a nursing blog post by a prolific nurse blogger, The Intensive Art, who, like me, hadn’t written for months and who admitted that he simply had lost the drive to blog. That’s how I had been feeling since April. And yet, since April, not a week has gone by when I haven’t thought to myself: ‘Man, I feel so bad that I’m not writing anything. Why am I not writing?’

And my answer to the question was one of my greatest fears: Maybe I’m becoming an uncreative, unreflective, dull, self-absorbed, regimented nurse zombie.

Indeed, I think I went there. I think I became so tired and overwhelmed – and so intent on not being tired and overwhelmed – that I just disappeared into my work and my regimen/routine, and thereby had no energy to reflect and share.

I also felt uninspired to blog because around May it struck me that my unit sees the same types of patients every day, most of the assessments I do are repeated patient after patient, and many tasks can be routine. For example, get medications (usually a beta blocker, proton pump inhibitor, anticoagulant, and diuretic), check meds, explain/administer meds, repeat. Pull femoral arterial sheath, hold pressure, check pulse, check vitals, assess groin site/dressing, repeat.

On the one hand, I was delighted that I’d become comfortable enough with my job to consider some things “routine.” On the other hand, I began to worry that I was getting sucked into a task-oriented mindset. Although as a novice I know it’s natural to be task-oriented, I could see how easy it is for tired nurses to have only enough energy to complete their tasks and nothing left to take on challenges and continuously seek knowledge and professional growth. I could see that the path of least resistance was that of following routines.

For a couple months, I found myself teetering at the precipice of a dreary and boring nursing career. This scared me back to my senses. Since July, I’ve pulled back from the cliff and have been running the other way. For example, instead of being bored by the medications that I have to pull over and over again, I take extra time to learn and remember new things about the meds. Instead of viewing a sheath pull as a boring, time-consuming task, I experiment with methods to make the procedure more pleasant for the patient and less tiring for my arms and back. Most important, I remind myself that pulling a sheath out of someone’s femoral artery is never boring — vigilance is key to avoiding a multitude of potential complications.

A book that I recommend for new and growing nurses is Patricia Benner’s “From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Practice.” It comforted me when I read it as a new grad last year because it normalized the incompetency I felt. It comforted me this summer when I worried about being consumed by tasks and routines.