Nursing burnout

Okay, I hate MSNBC, I'll admit it. But I do check their site every day, just to hear from the opposition, and once in a while I'll find a decent article. This one regarding new nursing graduate burnout is informative. 1 in 5 new nurses quit within their first year. Why?

It's simple. The nursing schools spend 2-4 years teaching us the right way, the safe way, the ethical and moral ways to practice the art and science of nursing.

Then we get our first job and management tells you, one way and the other, to ignore all that-- we don't have the time or the money to do things "right", we're just going to wing it.

Older nurses probably have built up more tolerance to risk and to horrific staffing conditions. I know, though, that I've watched nurses with 20-30 years of experience just totally "lose it" when management has overloaded them to the point where they're unable to practice nursing safely. They burn out, too. They've just got more invested in the profession. A new nurse, coming in, just says . . . "Well, this isn't what I wanted. I'd rather do anything else besides this."

I'm not quite there, yet. I still see possibilities in nursing where I can both practice safely and keep some sanity. Give me a few more years, I might change my mind.

I'll try to post, for an example, a post that I wrote back when I was finishing up nursing school.