I trained in England to be a nurse and my vision was to be like Florence yourself. I wanted to put on bandages and cool clothes onto feverish heads. I wasn't sure about vomit and bowel movements but there are ups and downs to everything in life. I certainly did not become a nurse to journal every moment of my day. Does a plumber or a mechanic have to stop and document every screw applied and in what fashion he did it. Nurse Aides are the real Florence Nightingales of today the trouble is they probably get paid as much as she did then. What I hate really is giving the time to documentation that I would rather be giving to the patient and their families. Does electronic documenting really help? When I get a report from an RN using a computer she has to go from screen to screen to get any info I ask for. It is not just at her fingertips like they promise.
So what do we do? I believe that verbalizing and acknowledging our frustrations provides stress relief. Talking with people that can relate makes me feel better. They understand my pain. Life grief it is not something that can be fixed but we can journey together and just knowing that someone is walking beside me provides comfort.
So true. We spend so much time doing notes, more and more paperwork and then some more new forms that we day by day have less time to do actual hands-on pt care. And then there are times when we do have the time and some get too close. One day out of the blue I stopped and thought about how many pts I had taken care of and how many deaths..it was mind boggling. No wonder so many of us are frustrated, dog tired, and unfortunately some are at burnout. Hopefully talking here will help some of those including myself.
ReplyDeletePaperwork is annoying but at least I can control when I do it. I become most frustrated when I am expected to do more than I can:
ReplyDeleteby my employer pulling me from patient visits to do an admission, by a family member expecting me to fix a problem that is truely unfixable, by myself when there are so many needs I simply don't have the time to meet.
What helps me is when I see all the hungry and hurting children on the TV with sad faces and tears in their eyes. I know that it is out of my realm to feed everyone of them but if I feed one I am touching a soul. It is the same at work. The bar is always too high but what I can do counts. Each working day I helped someone the best way I could and that made a difference in their lives.
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