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| Is
it time to SPICE UP your career? |
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| Is
it time to SPICE UP your career? |
| Illustration by Malcolm Garris |
By
Charlotte
Huff
Avoiding apathy is not a new struggle — in health care or any field. But as president-elect of the Association of California Nurse Leaders, Stephanie Ruh, MN, RN, worries that bigger workloads, sicker patients, and shortened hospital stays may challenge even the most dedicated nurse. She said the change in health care has "taken away something of the human touch, if you will, that nurses have had with patients and made their lives less satisfying." Frustration can fester when warp-speed nursing conflicts with idealism, and that sets the stage for later apathy, said Susan Brace, PhD, RN. "I don’t think you can nurse and not struggle with it." The Los Angeles-based psychologist, who worked eight years as a critical care nurse, defines the profession as the "science of interruption." "It’s amazing the amount of information that you have to hold in your head at one time of things that need to be done right now." Neither ideals nor frustrations are necessarily counterproductive, she said. "Frustration can sometimes be a tremendous motivator for creativity." But nurses can become apathetic when they offer creative solutions and hit an institutional wall. "These nurses get depleted emotionally first," she said. "Then what they do to try to save themselves is they get technically proficient. They want to mind the lines and mind the ventilator. If the patient is comatose, that’s fine with them." The institutional rigidity of the hospital setting "is not a good model for judging nurses’ interest or apathy level," according to California Nurses Association President Kit Costello, RN. She believes that nurses are finding outlets for their frustrations, such as writing letters or attending a county board of supervisors meeting. For new RNs, the reality of hospital nursing can come as a shock. Teri Ikic, RN, who works on the telemetry unit at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital in California, said she wanted to be a nurse since childhood. She entered an associate degree program immediately after high school and started working at San Pedro in 1996, shortly after graduation. Her first months were spent learning to juggle seven patients per shift and "make sure they were breathing and alive," she said. The struggle to make time for patient care drains nurses who chose a health career to care for people, said Donna Duell, MS, RN, division chair of the biological sciences and health occupations division at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. "I think what happens is they have a conflict within themselves." Four years ago, the college introduced a course on critical thinking to expose students to leadership and psychosocial issues that arise on the job. Stress-reduction assistance is also part of the curriculum, Duell said. It emphasizes, for example, "the fact that you need to exercise—that you need to find time for yourself." The fault isn’t necessarily with the nurse or the job, but how well the two are matched, says Christina Maslach, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written two books on job satisfaction issues, including The Truth About Burnout, published last year. Most people correctly believe work overload, lack of control, and the absence of reward recognition can push people toward apathy and burnout, Maslach said. But three other elements may be even more important in preventing those problems: co-worker camaraderie, a perception of workplace fairness, and whether the job aligns with your values. The nurses who do start sliding into apathy, Brace said, may find themselves in a bad mood a lot—both at work and at home. They may isolate themselves, stop offering input, and do charts alone. Even if their opinion is asked, they may not give one, she said. "What they’ve really lost is the feeling that their opinion matters." Managers need to give responsibilities to nurses, she said, supporting them in their decisions and ideas. "You can almost engineer apathy by not listening to people." Ruh, who is also vice president of patient care services at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, says she encourages nursing input and makes a point of being available in the hallways. When she notices a change in a nurse, she’ll ask about it and offer employee assistance services as an option. "I think it’s hard for healthcare givers of any kind to say, ‘I need help’," she said. Over time, Ikic became increasingly dissatisfied with the race to keep up with all the technical details. "I needed to feel like I wasn’t such a robot," she said. So she decided to modify the job to her satisfaction, sometimes staying late after her shift wrapping up charts, so she can spend more time on patient education and interaction. "That’s the only way I stay happy," she said. |
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???? Who, Me? Are you becoming apathetic? Find out. =Are you in a bad mood—both at and off work? =Do you typically arrive to work late, even by a few minutes? =Are you disorganized when the next shift arrives? =Do you isolate yourself from your co-workers? =Do you avoid volunteering for committees at hospitals? =Do you decline to offer solutions to nurse retention problems and other issues? =When you walk into a patient’s room, are your thoughts more technical than personal? =Do you put blinders on when extra help is needed nearby?
---------- WEB SITES mentioned in the story American Organization of Nurse Executives The Truth About Burnout by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter
---------- PREVIOUS stories Character Counts: Your actions are a window on your soul Is change the secret to a successful career? Job Satisfaction Why your job isn't a bowl of cherries |
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