Hello to all my fellow nurses out there,
And welcome to this talk on nurse burnout.
If you've been a nurse for quite a while or you're just starting.
I'm sure that you're quite aware.
Of all the chronic fatigue,
The moral fatigue.
Feelings of being overworked and short-staffed.
The technology burdens and.
Challenges with the electronic health care record.
Increased demands from.
Patients and their families.
And these are just a few examples of the chronic stress.
That we experience as nurses.
But more importantly,
These are also precursors to burnout.
What is burnout?
Burnout.
Involves being emotionally exhausted.
Sometimes we feel cynical.
It's just a generalized feeling of lack of meaning in our work.
We start to.
Fret the idea of going back to another ship.
This burnout,
This occurs twice as much in healthcare compared to any other.
Gender population or general.
Career path.
And the reason why we experience so much in health care is because we have stress and empathic suffering at the same time.
Being with people and caring for people who are suffering.
Oftentimes,
Nurses and staff in healthcare,
They're on the ledge of burnout,
But they're unaware to even connect to that.
They just feel wiped out.
They feel exhausted.
So I think the good thing.
Right now is that we're talking about it more.
And it's becoming.
An open conversation.
And having been a nurse for 30 years,
This is a shift.
And I think it's a good shift because it helps us to care for ourselves and really points us in the direction to do a deeper.
Type of self-care.
When we are made aware of these feelings and emotions we're experiencing.
So one of the good things about.
Having burnout is.
Once we notice,
Our patterns and our minds and our thoughts and feelings.
We can shift ourselves into a mindfulness.
Um.
.
.
Practice.
That can help us better understand the cause of our emotions and how better to respond to them.
Obviously,
When we're going through burnout.
We have physical and personal,
Interpersonal,
Emotional consequences.
And it actually makes us more susceptible and puts us at risk for heart disease and inflammation.
Depression,
Insomnia,
Relationship problems.
Addiction.
Et cetera.
And I think,
You know,
Before I talk a little bit about mindfulness and the foundations of mindfulness that can help us.
I think it's important to realize some of the stressors that contribute to burnout.
Some of them of which we don't have a lot of control over.
Some are at the institutional level.
And then some are at the systemic level.
And Then there's more personal aspects as well when we're dealing with lateral and vertical harassment.
Or bullying.
Or just a reactivity from our colleagues that also make our jobs harder.
And so I think what's important to discuss is.
.
.
How we also.
Allow ourselves to let go of some of the things we're holding when we're caring for patients that are suffering and going through a vast array of emotions,
And so are their families.
Some people are obviously traumatized and have life-changing disease and injuries,
And other people are being told they have stage four cancer and they're 20 years old.
And these are just a few examples of things that we deal with every day.
And then we start to pocket these things,
So to speak.
And we go home.
And sometimes we don't process these things deep enough and we keep them.
You know,
Stored in our bodies and we let go of them without actually processing them.
And we show up the next day and it becomes a cumulative.
Situation.
And so I just thought I would talk a little bit about.
I'm on YouTube.
Mindfulness and the awareness as a strategy and helping to.
.
.
Make some decisions at work and after work that might help us to better deal with these things.
And so just awareness as a strategy alone.
Can help us shift our emotion.
It takes 90 seconds to shift an emotion.
And so when you're dealing with somebody that's being reactive,
For example,
At work,
You can stop and take a breath.
Just notice what's going on in your body.
And just pause and have that.
Embodied experience for 90 seconds before you start reacting.
Back to that person.
And once the 90 seconds is there and that emotion has sort of shifted and you no longer feel that tension in your jaw or in your chest or wherever you might feel it,
Which is key in knowing.
You go to the body,
You pay attention,
You sit there for 90 seconds.
And focus on the sensations in the body that accompany whatever emotion you're feeling.
Anger,
Frustration.
Fight or flight.
Allowing this time to pass.
Provides an opportunity to respond in a more peaceful way.
And truly our mind follows our bodies.
So realizing when the body feels tense and contracted,
The mind is doing the same thing.
And so if we can connect the dots to the emotion that's arising,
Knowing where we feel it in the body,
And mindfully responding with the breathing practice.
Just as a tool,
We can shift from a sympathetic fight or flight reactivity to one of calm.
More relaxed.
In control.
And we have agency to respond in a more healthy way.
It's making a choice.
Mindfulness is a choice.
And according to Jon Kabat-Zinn,
He was a professor at Massachusetts Medical School.
He's known for his work in mindfulness-based stress reduction,
A program that shows that mindfulness practice decreases anxiety,
Depression,
Burnout.
And it helps us to increase our connection with our colleagues and our patients.
Which leads to.
.
.
A healthier emotional intellect.
And better outcomes.
Thank you for listening to this short talk on burnout and mindfulness.
And you can follow me here on Insight Timer.
If you'd like more on mindfulness and meditation,
And look for some of my talks to come.
For nurses.
Thank you,
And thank you for the work that you do.
