مايا

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
nursingdiary
nursingdiary

“Today I woke up feeling like I had a hangover. I’m starting my 4 day break from the ICU, after working 6 of the last 8 days. I drug myself down the stairs and starting cleaning house as I normally do on my days off. I glanced at myself in the mirror at the bottom of my stair case. Horror. My face blatantly shows the pure exhaustion that I feel, and my hair looks a complete mess. “Thank god I’m off work today and my patients won’t have to see this worn out version of myself” is my first thought. People who aren’t nurses always tell me, “You only work three days a week? Wow! That must be great. I wish I had your schedule!” ..Only three days a week? ONLY!? I wake up at 4:30AM, shake off my fatigue, drive an hour to work, and then begin my scheduled 12 hour shift. 12 often turns into 13 hours or even more depending on the patient load and if I were able to keep up with my charting. When I’m done and finally clock out, I drive home arriving around 8PM, where I strip out of my scrubs and collapse onto the couch where I snuggle my cats and tell my husband about my day until I pass out from exhaustion. I slip upstairs to bed, to the disbelief of my husband that I could possibly be so tired, and I set my alarm and prepare for my next shift. ONLY 36 hours a week. But does anyone who’s not a nurse know what those 36 hours consist of? Juggling all my nursing tasks for each individual patient while also trying to communicate with the doctors, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, PT, OT, social work, our aides, the patients themselves, and their families?! Yes, that’s right, I communicate with all of these people on a daily basis. I am personal coordinator for my patients. I am their voice, their advocate. I must be aware of my patients needs at all times. Room 101 is going up stairs to cath lab at 0900. 102 wants their pain medicine at 0915. 103 needs to be turned at 0930. Got it. My mental check list is a never ending dynamic that I must prioritize and rearrange constantly. My job is scary. Always thinking, always analyzing, ALWAYS aware of my actions. I could cause a patient to lose their life if I am not critically thinking about everything that I do and every medication that I give. Is this dosage appropriate, does this patient need this medication? It is all my responsibility to keep the patient safe. Even when I am doing everything that I can it isn’t always enough. I’ve had family members displeased that I took a little longer to answer a call light. I’m sorry that I couldn’t get you a coke right away, I was busy titrating a lifesaving medication in the room right next to yours. I have been asked by a family member if I were qualified to even be a nurse, surely I was too young for that. I have been told that I am too weak to help lift a patient when in reality I can lift more weight that I weigh. Nursing is hard. I take all these comments and offer a kind response to remain professional even though it can make me feel really small at times. Not feeling appreciated is hard when all I am trying to do is help. I have been there when a patient said their lasts words before being intubated and never being able to come off of the vent. I have been there as a patient has taken their last breaths on the earth. I have been there when a patient has decided that their body can no longer fight, and they would like to receive comfort care. I have provided comfort care as family members are silent, with tears streaming down their faces, as I turn the lifeless body of their once resilient family member. I have been there when a doctor has told a healthy, active patient in front of their spouse that they have stage 4 cancer, and will not survive. I have stood and held my tears to remain strong for family members who have had their hearts shattered by the news that their loved ones will not be coming home again. I have sobbed on my way home from work because my heart is shattered too. I am so sorry that you have to go through these things. I am so sorry that your loved one has cancer. I am so sorry that myself and the doctors couldn’t get your loved one to wake back up after being sedated on the ventilator. Nursing is hard. I am human. I care about my patients. How could I not? My heart breaks along with my patients and their family members. Then I go home and try to pretend that I have not been broken during my shift. I don’t want to burden my husband with my sadness, and I need to pull it together so I can go back to work in the morning and do it again. So how do I do it? How do all nurses do it? How do we manage ONLY 36 hours a week? Because nursing is beautiful. I have been there as a scared patient on a ventilator has woken up so I held her hand and told her that everything would be okay. She could not speak as she had a lifesaving breathing tube down her throat. Somehow she managed to grasp a pen with her weak hands and wrote “I love you guys.” My heart exploded with joy. I have provided comfort to someone when they were far from comfortable. I have been there when a patient has come off of a ventilator after being on it for a week, and watched as they cried and said they were so happy to be alive. I helped bring that person relief. I have bought lip gloss for an elderly patient whose son forgot to bring in her lipstick. The smile on her done up face was priceless as she put on the lip gloss to complete her look. I have made a patient genuinely happy even though she is sick and in the critical care unit. I have been there providing comfort care to a dying loved one and family members have hugged me and thanked me for being the angel that their family member needs. Nursing is beautiful. Life is beautiful. I watch lives change, I watched lives end, and I watch lives get a second chance because of the care and medicine that I have provided. Nursing is hard. Nursing is stressful. Nursing is exhausting. It drains me both physically and mentally. I come home tired, sweaty, and defeated. Not all days are good days. Nursing is not all sunshine and rainbows. But nursing is my life. I dedicate my life to saving the lives of others. Those break through moments when a patient miraculously recovers, when a patient holds your hand and tells you how thankful that they are for you, and the moments when myself and a patient can share in a good laugh. The feeling of pride I feel when my patient came in on a ventilator but walks out at discharge, makes it all worth it. All the wonderful, precious moments are why I love nursing. The great moments are what get myself and my coworkers through the long, difficult 12 hour shifts. Thank god for fantastic coworkers. My coworkers are like my family. I know that they understand the mental turmoil that I go through after a hard day. Only nurses understand truly what nurses go through. So the next time that you want to tell a nurse that it must be great to work ONLY 36 hours a week, please be mindful of what those 36 hours are like. Give a nurse a hug today, and be thankful that we continue to do what we do, and don’t judge us when we drink a little extra wine. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Sincerely, the exhausted, but still smiling ICU nurse.”

— Kelsey Van Fleet, via Facebook

medicinewithcoffee
gerinurse: “belleofthehospital: “dxmedstudent: “ humanitymed: “ humansofnewyork: ““I just finished medical school. Now I’m heading to residency, which is supposed to be even tougher. I’ve been working sixteen-hour days. Then I’m expected to study...
humansofnewyork

“I just finished medical school.  Now I’m heading to residency, which is supposed to be even tougher.  I’ve been working sixteen-hour days.  Then I’m expected to study every night when I get home.  Some of my classmates only sleep three hours per night.  I tried that for a few months during my surgery rotation, but I ended up getting really depressed.  I felt completely depersonalized.  Everything seemed like a dream.  To make matters worse, a lot of the instructors are jerks.  I think they went through hell when they were students, so they feel like they should put us through hell.  On the first day of rotations, my attending physician told me: ‘I’m an asshole, but I’ll make you a better doctor.’  He made fun of me in front of other students.  He put me down in front of patients.  He’d threaten to kick me out every day.  I guess they’re trying to weed people out and make strong doctors.  But they’re just traumatizing people.  They’re making us apathetic.  I got into medicine because I really wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.  But after going through hell, I just don’t care anymore.”

humanitymed

I thought when I got to medical school things would be easier. Not that the work wouldn’t be hard, but that a little bit of the pressure would be removed. After all, it’s pass/fail, and as everyone says, “once you’re in, you’re in”.

Midway through second year, my mental health has never been worse. I go to a school that is relatively supportive, with classmates who are, on the whole, genuinely kind people. I haven’t even made it to the wards yet, but I still feel beaten down. I’m tired. I’m sick of being constantly examined and nitpicked, of unclear expectations, of what sometimes feels like superhuman demands, of being told to do more “self care” when I don’t have time to take care of myself.

My advisor is kind and well meaning. She says things will get better third year when I’m not stuck in the classroom all the time, but she also reminds me that things are only going to get harder when I get to residency. She says this in the context of wanting me to get my mental health issues taken care of now, which is totally valid, but it’s also devastating to hear that this is not as bad as it gets. 


No one feels bad for medical students or doctors, not really. The conversation is mostly about how we get paid too much, or how our lack of sleep puts patients at risk, or how something got missed because we just didn’t empathize enough with or listen to our patient. Sometimes it feels like no one cares if our quality of life sucks as long as it’s not affecting patient care. “We knew what we were getting into”, and we get paid too much for anyone to feel sorry for us. 

That’s fine, I get it. We’re in the business of caring for people. We really are, in so many ways, privileged beyond belief. I got into medicine because I genuinely, truly wanted to help people. I wanted to be the “good doctor” that can empathize, that can really listen to and hear their patients. I wanted to give of myself every day. I wanted to be part of the solution, to fix “the system”. I wanted the ability to eliminate some of the pain and suffering in the world because I had watched my family suffer greatly due to the imperfection and limitations of medicine. 

Now I just feel tired, and broken, and sad all of the time. I feel deep regret for all of the life I’ve missed out on in the pursuit of medicine. All the sacrifices I made just to get here don’t feel worth it. 

I’m trying to get all of the help I can for the despair that I feel. I’m trying to get better at self care. I’m trying to be more resilient. I’m trying. There are some days when I feel like a worthless pile of crap for not being able to rise to the occasion, but I also have to think that, in spite of all the reiterations of how I need to take better care of myself, maybe I’m not the problem.

dxmedstudent

Friend, you are not the problem.

belleofthehospital

“I feel deep regret for all of the life I’ve missed out on in the pursuit of medicine.”

I love medicine and what we are privileged to do, but same. We are not the problem. I’ve started making better choices for myself as a third year, and realizing it’s ok for medicine to not be my entire life, but it’s so hard to find balance. 

gerinurse

This is so sad to read, not because this person is hurting because sadly that is normal. It’s terrible because of the sad truth written here. I remember having graduated nursing school and having already written my registration exams. I sat on our couch, looked at my husband and said “what am I supposed to be doing now”. I had spent so much time pursuing my education that I didn’t know how to have a life. Medical students have so many more years of this than nursing students do. This was 27yrs ago and it is so much more intense today. We leave our studies and come out into the world with such idealism. We want to be empathetic and giving of ourselves but the system has become about “customer service” and not about making people well. Which hospital or LTC facility has the best rankings for its “hotel like atmosphere”. This was not what any of us signed up for and it’s hard to process it emotionally and mentally. Add in the death and tragedy we see daily and many medical personnel are now the biggest sufferers of PTSD. We the people working within the system are not the problem, we are not perfect nor are we free of mistakes. We are just people of flesh and blood who are trying to make a difference in peoples lives.