Six Signs You’re Approaching Burnout as a Nurse (And What to do About It!)

We’re living in interesting times, where the demand for nursing care has been outpacing the supply of nurses for a number of years now. Many nurses are overworked and struggling to keep up with a longer list of patients without adequate support.

Nursing isn’t just a job – it’s a vocation. And what you do in your day-to-day role as a nurse can genuinely transform people’s lives.
It is a rewarding career with great opportunities for advancement and stability. It's not without drawbacks, though. Working as a nurse can be both physically and emotionally draining,

Challenges brought on by the recent pandemic are pushing many nurses right to the edge. In England, a record number of NHS nurses have left their jobs due to burnout and PTSD. Similar stories are hitting the news around the world.

That brings us to the pressing question: Could you be close to burnout?

Recognising the signs can help you help yourself before you’re pushed to the edge too.
Read through these six common signs of burnout to see where you stand right now. Or, if you recognise these signs in a colleague, perhaps it’s time to offer help?

1. You don’t have time for rest or relaxation.

Balancing an intense workload and a challenging shift pattern with your personal responsibilities leaves you no time to do anything just for the sake of enjoyment. It feels like all you do is work for other people, and you feel rushed and stressed most of the time.

The stress experienced in today’s fast-paced nursing environment requires a routine of relaxation and de-stressing when you’re away from work. If your life away from work is equally stressful, your body and mind never have a chance to recover from the tension of your workday. You could reach a level of stress that can impact your physical and mental health in time.

2. You can’t find anything to celebrate despite succeeding in life.

You know you’ve come a long way in recent years. You have multiple successes that you have been applauded for, but you’re not ready to celebrate any of those wins. The overwhelming stress and demands of your daily life have overshadowed your achievements.

It’s difficult to acknowledge how far you’ve come in life when you fail to celebrate successes big and small. Nurses experiencing burnout often don’t place enough emphasis on the good that they have achieved.

3. It seems impossible to delegate because everything will crumble without you.

The advice to share the load with others makes you want to laugh until you cry. In your current situation, there are no reasonable opportunities to delegate some of your workload to others. You don’t have adequate support and resources to do so, which makes you feel trapped in an intense work environment that has you overworked, and likely, underpaid.

4. You frequently forget to eat because your daily life is so busy.

How many hours have you rushed between patients without stopping to take a sip of water, let alone enjoy a healthy meal? Staffing shortages have placed incredible workloads on many nurses, forcing them to choose between basic care for their own bodies and the care of their patients.

Forgetting to eat on a routine basis is one of the simplest yet most ignored signs of potential burnout. Failure to fill your own cup will eventually lead to an empty cup that cannot pour into others.

5. You feel personally attacked by many situations on the job.

What happens on the job is no longer purely work. You can’t leave it on the ward or because it feels personal. You no longer feel valued, respected, and appreciated for your work. Some things have happened that make you believe you’re not of much value to others. That leads to emotional trauma that invades every hour of your life, even when you’re not at work.

6. When you do find time to sleep, your quality of sleep is poor.

Tossing and turning has become the norm for you. Perhaps you struggle to fall asleep because you have so much on your mind. By the time your mind quiets and you doze off, your alarm is ready to sound for another day in the trenches of nursing life.

You may also fall asleep immediately but struggle to stay asleep. Perhaps you stay in a light doze with your mind spinning rather than sinking into a deep sleep that can help your mind and body recharge.

With time, the lack of quality sleep will make it even more difficult to deal with the stress of daily life. Stress and anxiety are heightened when your body doesn’t have time to recuperate.

What to Do If You’re Experiencing Burnout

Do you recognise many of these signs of burnout in yourself or some of your colleagues?
Is it time to consider making some changes so that you can regain control?

It’s often difficult to regain your work-life balance without changing your work environment, but it’s possible if you follow a few critical steps to intervene on your own behalf:

• Make a list of all the ways you’ve been neglecting yourself. Highlight at least two or three of those things that you can commit to doing on a routine basis. Plan to do those things at a set time every day, making room in your life for small acts of self-care.
• Write down all the things you’ve been doing when away from work. Cross out at least a few things that you could drop in order to prioritise sleep and time with loved ones.
• You may realise that you’re spending time on things that aren’t the best use of your personal time.
• Let your manager know that you’re struggling with burnout. It’s difficult to admit weakness in the workplace, but you may have more resources for support than you realise.
• Coordinate with other nurses to see how you can help relieve one another of stress while on the job. Sometimes, just covering another nurse while she takes 10 minutes to use the bathroom and take a deep breath is a tremendous help.

Finally, don’t put your head down and hide the fact that you’re heading toward burnout. If more nurses are honest about the emotional toll of nursing in our current environment, perhaps more resources will come along to help. Advocating for improvements in your life now is better than reaching the point of complete burnout and leaving the field, as many others have done in recent years.

If you are looking to make a change, then, you could consider becoming an agency nurse. That would allow you to dictate how, when and where you work.
Talking to a good recruitment consultancy, such as the team at CareJoy, would help you to see what options may be available to you. You’ll be surprised at just how many options are available to you and it could really help you achieve the change you need to avoid burnout.