Nurses spend more time with patients than most other types of providers and have unique insight into patient care and the the healthcare system.

Nurse Burnout Recovery: Healing Ourselves to Better Serve Patients

Shedding parts of us that no longer serve us.

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

A couple months ago, I shared my experience with burnout and lessons learned from it. This experience propelled me into a healing journey. This healing journey wasn’t just about a newfound appreciation for “self-care.” Guided by several mentors, coaches, and healers, it incorporated modalities such as energy healing, spiritual healing, mindset work, inner child work, meditation, breathwork, and journaling. Burnout had initiated an intense deconstruction and deprogramming process that made it clear it was time to shed the pieces of me that were no longer serving me.

During this healing journey I asked myself:

  • Why do I do what I do?
  • Why do I feel that I’m not good enough/smart enough/skilled enough to take care of my patients?
  • Why do I feel like I can’t prioritize myself and my own needs so I can take better care of my patients?
  • Why do I feel like it’s not safe to speak up if I have a concern?
  • Why am I afraid to fail?

After being brutally honest with myself, I realized I had to go back to where the programming began.

Confronting our fears.

As […]

2023-10-02T09:38:34-04:00October 2nd, 2023|Nursing, nursing perspective, wellness|1 Comment

Unseen Struggles: When the Pain of Chronic Illness Meets Disbelief

A friend’s desperation.

Photo by Ben Blennerhassett on Unsplash

It was early in the morning when I received a call from my best friend, who was crying and
distraught. She frantically rattled off her symptoms: “My stomach is on fire, I can’t sleep, nothing is relieving the discomfort, and I’m in excruciating pain.” Although she’d been feeling discomfort for the previous two weeks, at first she’d thought the intensity of her current symptoms might be from food poisoning. Given her not always healthy diet, which she and I had discussed in the past, I too at first thought she might have eaten something that set the symptoms off.

“It hurts so badly I don’t think I can take it anymore,” she told me over the phone. “I can’t stop going to the bathroom.”

She said that despite the severity of her pain, her family just thought she was being dramatic. I could sense her desperation as she sobbed over the phone. Even though she did not want to seek medical attention, I begged her to go to the nearest clinic or hospital and told her I’d meet her there.

Crohn’s disease: When nurses doubt a patient’s pain.

In the emergency department (ED) where she […]

Why I Practice Dying: A Nurse’s Perspective

author Diane SolomonI’ve been fascinated by death as long as I remember.

Just before I turned eight, my Grampa Lewis died. The event left a lasting impression on me. He had gone to the hospital, puffy and deteriorating from kidney disease, at age 56. I remember that Dad parked the station wagon with faux wood paneling in the hospital lot and we all got out and stood there in cold December sunlight. Strict visiting hours prevailed then, and no kids were allowed, period. Dad pointed up to Grampa’s window, where he waved down at us through the glaring glass as we waved back. The youngest of four children, I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t locate him in the anonymous grid of windows.

At the funeral, I grappled with whether or not to look into the casket. Both available options seemed horrible—be forever haunted by a vision of dead Grampa, or guilt-ridden because I hadn’t respected him enough to look.

As a parent, I know no child should feel alone with that type of decision. But this was the 60s, when feelings weren’t discussed. Although neither an open casket or an embalmed body are traditionally Jewish, Granny must have decided she wanted it this way. At the last minute, as I […]

Tuning in to Humor in Nursing

1. Nurses Don’t Have to Make This Stuff Up

Photo by Kah Lok Leong on Unsplash

During a fire drill the nurse, Kathryn, was closing doors to patients’ rooms. An 86-year-old patient was talking on the phone to her daughter when Kathryn reached her room. As Kathryn started to shut the patient’s door, the woman asked, “What’s that ringing noise?”

“Don’t worry,” Kathryn said. “We’re just having a little fire drill.”

As she was leaving, Kathryn heard the woman tell her daughter, “No, everything’s just fine, dear. The hospital’s on fire but a nice little nurse just came to lock me in my room.”

Having worked as a nurse, as well as having interviewed hundreds of nurses over the years, I can attest that you don’t have to make this stuff up. Yet nurses from coast to coast right now are telling me, “There’s nothing funny happening in my life.”

Having studied the brain and humor for decades, I can tell you that if that is your belief, that will also be your reality. Telling yourself there’s nothing funny around you will wire your reticular activating system to show you just that—nothing funny.

Even during times of chaos—overwhelming patient census, lack of resources, staffing shortages—humorous material […]

Potential Changes to Blood Donation Policies for MSM in the United States

Critical blood shortages persist.

Blood supply shortages heightened by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to persist in the United States. Major blood suppliers report that this is the lowest level of blood supply they’ve experienced in a decade. Despite this, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to uphold a longstanding ban on donations from men who have sex with men (MSM), even those who are HIV-negative and in monogamous relationships. The current ban, revised in 2020 due to blood shortages during the pandemic, recommends deferrals for all men who report having sex with men within the last three months.

In early January of this year, the American Medical Association (AMA) sent a strong message to the FDA recommending a change in the current practices. After much external debate, the FDA recently took a significant step by initiating a national pilot study to examine these deferral policies. This study, entitled Assessing Donor Variability and New Concepts in Eligibility (ADVANCE), aimed to guide the FDA in revising the current screening questionnaire and deferral practices. Since the study’s conclusion in September, news outlets have reported that the FDA is considering revising the questionnaire to shift its focus to individual risk, based on […]

2022-12-19T13:03:58-05:00December 19th, 2022|Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health|0 Comments
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