A Nurse’s Lessons from Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Burnt-out and realizing it’s time for a change.

I had always been able to juggle family, school, and work life well, including roles as class mom, scout leader, and community volunteer, completing my doctorate in nursing, and working two jobs. But at a certain point, and despite my supportive family’s efforts, I began to burn out. Working as a nurse leader for a behavioral health unit was a dream come true and a nightmare all in one. I found myself caring so much, investing so much of myself, that I lost myself in the process.

In the hope that it would help, I moved back to nursing education. It didn’t. There was a void. I was missing something. I was missing me.

Maybe this is what burnout on the way to compassion fatigue feels like. But whatever we call it, my response was to quit my job and hike the Appalachian Trail for five months from Maine to Georgia with my husband. We’d always lived simply, and once we’d made the decision to go, the pieces fell into place.

Along the way, I made many discoveries. It’s paradoxical that I’d gone hiking to forget about nursing, yet I was reminded about it with each step.

Here are some souvenirs from […]

2022-11-15T12:02:55-05:00November 15th, 2022|Nursing, nursing stories, wellness|0 Comments
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Medical-Surgical Nurses Modeling Resiliency

Resiliency is one way to address not only compassion fatigue, but also the change fatigue that can result from multiple new initiatives, our ever-increasing workload, and major reorganizations and mergers.

The 27th annual convention of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN), which took place in Orlando September 13–16, offered a wealth of cutting-edge educational presentations along with opportunities for networking and fun. On the second full day of the conference, Marisa Streelman, an AMSN Board member as well as a unit director at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, led a town hall meeting on the subject of workplace resiliency.

Streelman started the session off by defining resiliency as “capable of withstanding shock without permanent rupture.” She reminded us that the benefits of resiliency include “bounce-ability”—the ability to come back from stress stronger than before—and a connection to workmates that helps us to be truly present at work. Resiliency is one way to address not only compassion fatigue, but also the change fatigue that can result from multiple new initiatives, our ever-increasing workload, and major reorganizations and mergers.

Ways to build workplace resiliency.

Streelman pointed out several ways in which we can build workplace resiliency:

2018-10-03T14:43:20-04:00October 3rd, 2018|Nursing|1 Comment
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Integrating Strong Emotions as a Developing Nurse

Most people, I would venture to say, start off in their profession with a fair degree of idealism, and this certainly holds true for nurses. When I talk with nursing students or new grad nurses and ask their story about why they chose nursing, the most common response runs along the lines of wanting to help others in meaningful ways.

Preparing new nurse grads for nursing realities.

In fact, I will meet with such a group of students this afternoon as I speak on a panel in the ethics class at my nursing alma mater. I, and other colleagues on this panel, want to encourage and inspire. But we will also be telling the students about the challenges we have encountered in situations involving moral distress, ethical dilemmas, and personal burnout. We will present situations when we felt that what we were doing at the bedside was not meaningful because we were only prolonging suffering—or, in other cases, so full of emotion and significance that it felt overwhelming to process.

We want to present the reality of nursing to these students, not to shatter their idealism, but to push them towards meaningful self-awareness from the start of their nursing career so that they are not caught off-guard by the degree to which they will […]

2018-01-18T10:04:09-05:00December 8th, 2017|Nursing|2 Comments
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NPR Syndrome

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

calligraphy, 36" x 24," mixed media on vellum, 2007, by julianna paradisi calligraphy, 36″ x 24,” mixed media on vellum, 2007, by julianna paradisi

Compassion fatigue is a syndrome commonly known to nurses and other professionals involved in patient care. It is the result of constant exposure to traumatic events occurring to others. Its effects on the psyche of nurses are widely studied, recognized as a factor in burnout and self-medication, and sometimes result in nurses leaving the profession.

My clinical practicum as a nursing student, nearly 30 years ago, was in oncology. There I saw patients succumb to cancer. Many were young adults. One left behind a grieving husband, and an infant. It was heartbreaking. I asked my preceptor, a skilled, compassionate, and uncannily jolly nurse, how did she avoid burnout? I did not know about compassion fatigue yet.

She wisely replied, “You need to develop a happy, fulfilling personal life outside of nursing. You have to shut it off when you leave the hospital.” It was good advice.

I took it to heart, and over the years developed a happy, fulfilling personal life. However, turning it off when leaving the […]

2016-11-21T13:05:21-05:00February 21st, 2014|career, nursing perspective|8 Comments
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Differentiating Nurse Burnout From Boredom

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

BarriersToAccussParadisi

Nurses frequently discuss burnout. Sometimes it’s called compassion fatigue. Regardless of which term, nurses are at risk because our work requires complex technical skills, an expanding knowledge base, physical endurance, and critical thinking, since a patient’s symptoms often do not present in a manner described in the textbooks studied in nursing school.

Above and beyond this, nurses are expected to display warmth and caring towards their patients, even ones who are rude and argumentative. This alone requires character and self-discipline. Add inadequate staffing ratios to the mix, and it’s easy to understand that at some point, a nurse may become susceptible to burnout or compassion fatigue.

Nursing school graduation and passing NCLEX don’t make you a nurse. These milestones earn you a place at the starting gate. It’s up to the individual nurse to navigate her or his career towards growth and longevity. I clearly remember, several years into my practice, recognizing that I’d reached a point of expertise in which I might not know exactly what to do in any emergency, but whatever intervention I chose would be safe and maintain a patient until the doctor or code team arrived. This was around the same time I stopped feeling nauseous every time I […]

2016-11-21T13:06:45-05:00August 22nd, 2013|career, nursing perspective|6 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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