Kind of Tough

Disclaimer: I love nursing.

Here's the thing- while nursing is probably the most amazing, versatile, expanding, and rewarding jobs in the world, there are still things that are really tough. I expected to run into them every once in a while, but the fact is that nursing is a hard job. I'm learning this and I'm going to share these experiences with you.

The hardest thing I've had to deal with is sleep. I have never had problems sleeping in my life and all of a sudden I find myself an insomniac. Part of this is because of crazy night shift schedules and me working myself up over a lack of sleep, but a big part is the fact that I can't turn my mind off after a shift. I think of my patients, I think of the things I could have done differently, I think of things that I might have missed, I think of the upcoming shift ahead and a thousand other things. I hope that I'll learn to adjust to this eventually and be able to turn my mind off. Time will tell.

While I was in school, I thought I was an expert at separating my nursing life from my personal life. I still think that I'm not bad at this, but there are definitely times when I find myself weighed down by a patient I had that night. I don't leave it all at the workplace like I want to. Sometimes, this can be great. I love seeing progress in patients and watching them get better, but there's definitely a downside when my patients are not expecting to ever get better.

I have one of the best support systems in the world. That's a fact. There are people in my life who listen to my crazy stories, who are available to talk on the phone at weird hours, and who take the time to understand my life. I am so blessed. However, there are times when I am talking to people and I feel like they don't have a clue what going to work is like. It's hard to communicate in casual conversations that crying in the bathroom for a patient who's not going home is a normal occurrence, that it's a struggle to smile going into a scared patient's room even though I was called an obscene name by a confused patient thirty seconds ago. Sometimes it's hard to admit that I have to force myself to care about someone who is difficult to love or that I have to remember to treat all patient's equally and with respect no matter what their cognitive status is.

When people in my life ask me how my job is going, I say, "It's going really well." That's true. I'm learning so much, getting great experience, caring for wonderful people, working alongside talented team members, and fulfilling my calling. But it's also kind of tough.