My heart breaks when I experience the cognitive dissonance of reading social media posts reinforcing the message that caring and compassion on contingent on being the same, on sharing a value or view, a privilege to share with people who are like us, who think like us, who agree with us. What about them?
Caring is an integral part of nursing. We nurse with our hearts and our minds. In the 12 years of my nursing career I have seen how much of ourselves many nurses give when they enter into the caring relationship with their patients. I have walked the fine line between exemplary care and burning out. I think that in a profession that is centered around care it can be easy to ignore care of ourselves in our efforts to care for our patients. However, when we lose sight of ourselves and our wellness we are sacrificing both our hearts and our minds.
In the last 12 years of my nursing career I have learned firsthand tha f we do not care for our patients then we cannot be empathetic, compassionate or ethical in our care. In the landscape of health care today, with increasing pressure to do more with less, less staffing, less money, less experienced nurses, less nurses, how are we to survive if we cannot care for ourselves? In my experience it is all too easy to forget about caring for ourselves in the seemingly endless pursuit to help more and help better. But I think that, as nurses, we need to hold ourselves accountable to the care we give to ourselves, recognizing that ignoring our own needs creates a chasm between the care that we want to provide and the care that is actually being given. The result can be seen in the nervous flutter of anxiety that begins to compound in the put of our stomachs, growing into a massive ball of fear, shame and disdain for a job that we once enjoyed.
I think that when we are feeling that sense of dread about walking through the doors of our workplace we really have to challenge ourselves to ask the question, “what is happening with me today” and take a personal inventory of our emotional state.
I think that all too often we are quick to ignore the feeling of nervousness in our stomachs, or perhaps we are too afraid to ask:
- What is going on with me right now?
- Is today somehow different than yesterday?
- Do I have the ability to change the thing that is bothering me?
I think we also have to be really honest with ourselves about if we are holding our patients to a higher standard than ourselves and then explore why that is.
- Why is it acceptable to not only expect, but also demand that our patients are fully engaged in their health care when we may be quick to ignore both our mental health and our physical health needs?
- Is this a condition of the guise of selflessness an artifact of nursing?
- How can we collectively achieve a balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others?
Peace,
Michelle D.
nursingforsocialjustice 
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