nursingforsocialjustice

As I renew my RN licensed for the 14th time I cannot help but reflect on the rocky road of my nursing career.

Five years into my nursing career I was done. I was 31 years old, had two kids under the age of 4 and I was tired. It wasn’t what I expected. I constantly felt like I was the odd one out for believing that the common, taken for granted as normal practices and attitudes in the places I worked were morally and ethically wrong. I felt like I was trying to swim upstream in a river of “this is just how it is”.

I didn’t arrive at my 31 year old perspective out of nowhere. When I began my nursing career in 2008 I was 26 years old. I wasn’t prepared for the amount learning and professional and personal development I need post-graduation from nursing school to feel competent in my job. It was a steep learning curve, and this was with the somewhat structured support of a 6-week new graduate orientation, a luxury that does not happen today, at least not in mental health services. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I drew knowledge from my workplace peers. Looking back I don’t know if any of us were really one the same page with the mission, vision and values of the specialized concurrent disorder unit we worked in.

I was so tired at the end of my shifts. I left each shift wondering how or if I was doing any good. After changing jobs 3 times in three years and failed attempts in casual jobs I was faced with the stark realization that I was so invested in the outcome that I had lost sight of the importance of the journey.

It’s a shocking transition from nursing student to RN. Some of this shock comes from a gap in wha we are taught in nursing school, some of it came from being educated in Calgary and moving to Vancouver. Looking back it would have been helpful to have more curriculum on social inequity, cultural competency, decolonization, intersectionality, substance use, and trauma informed practice.

I’m not a new graduate anymore, but sometimes it feel like I graduated yesterday. It’s actually quite shocking to me how I still second guess myself, even when it comes to the very niche area of nurse research that I do, history of registered psychiatric nursing education in BC. Is that normal? Or is it imposter syndrome? Or functioning in a state of genuine curiosity and openness? This motivation I have for nursing RNs and flows. 15 years into my career I’m tired. And it’s not the pandemic that’s doing this. This collective fatigue that all nurses are feeling has been a long time coming. I’ve been tired and it’s felt like an uphill battle this entire time.

I haven’t arrived at my 41 year old perspective out of nowhere. It’s an accomplishment that I’m still here and that I still love being a nurse. And I am hopeful about the future of healthcare and nursing. But I am also aware that a lot of effort from a lot of nurses willing to rock the boat is necessary to change anything. This is not a passive process.

We all want to be the best we can be. I think that my experience forced me to reflect on my own understanding of mental health nursing and nursing in general. If my 15 year career has taught me anything it is that only way we can take care of other people is to have compassion and care for ourselves. The concept of self-care percolates up regularly. This crystallized for me 6 years ago when I joined a team at a new program. We had a talk about trauma in health care workers where the facilitator really challenged us on our application of self-care. She asked the question, were we being accountable to ourselves? Or was it again, simply lip-service.

Do as I say, not as I do. As recently as 4 months ago I was seriously questioning whether or not I could continue on in my nursing career. And maybe part of that was me, me trying to do too much and feeling defeated by not following through on all the ambitious goals I set out for myself. I’m not alone in this. It’s a hard ask sometimes to ask nurses to embody the understanding that if we do not take care of ourselves then we are not providing the best care to those we care for. So let’s collectively do this. Let’s take care of each other and ourselves so we can take care of our patients and their families.

Love,

Michelle D.