Burnout vs. Moral Injury vs. Betrayal

According to Psychology Today, “burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.” I hear a lot of peers, hospital administrators saying, “They are burned out.” Then administrators, f-ing fix it. I am not talking managers; I am talking to the upper management. The cost of orienting a new nurse is beyond 100,000 for twelve months. So, the system spends this number on a new nurse, and give them the retention bonuses. Lately, I am seeing new nurses quit at a rapid rate. They just spent 100,000 on this nurse, not the ones that stay. The reason why is not only are they having to work their three twelve-hour shifts, but they also have to do education days in between. They just got out of 2-4 years of living hell from nursing school! Wake up corps aka corporations. Also, wake up to the fact in my almost 20 years as a nurse I get 800 to 1000 dollars bonus every 2 years! This blog is nurse, honesty, truth, so it’s time to wake people up.

Moral Injury is defined as according to Wikipedia, “is the damage to an individual’s moral conscience and values that occurs when they witness, perpetrate, or fail to prevent actions that violate their deeply held moral beliefs.” When we feel burn out which is essentially stressed out for too long, we let go of our moral values, therefore being injured. This all depends on your morals. They may look differently than the person next to you. Nurses took an oath to “do no harm.” So, we go way above this and take the beatings from patient’s, family members, high administration, not managers. Let me make that clear. Managers are just puppets for the administrators. They are innocent. OK, back to moral injury. If my morals are high and I am unable to fix a patient either mentally or physically, we take that deep within ourselves, our insides and we suppress it which creates injury. Make sense? Families yell at us because the fear for their loved one. Guess who takes that on? The nurse at the fore front. We try and diffuse the fear, but sometimes we don’t have the energy or essentially the time to listen. So, going forward, we the nurses, should be giving out our administrator’s numbers. How do you think this will go? The more time in which we do not think we succeed at our jobs, the injury is greater. The only way to heal this is strong boundaries. Would obtaining our administrator’s business cards and handing them out be a boundary? It won’t be well received from the administrator’s; however, that is what their job is, but we hardly see them.

Moral injury and burnout create betrayal. The only reason I have survived in the hospital system is because I have strong boundaries, I have been in therapy for a long time, and I have strong communication skills/techniques. I was betrayed this last weekend when I asked for more pay to entice nurses to come in and work. I was looking ahead because I want my patients and staff cared for. It took two hours for someone to get back to the supervisor to get the pay! What the f***. Side note, offering incentive 12 hours or less to the shift ahead does not work! People have lives outside of the hospital. They have to plan. So, get this, we only get a few spots for incentive pay each shift and we still work short. Your loved ones are getting minimal care due to uppers. We, the downers, aka down on the floor with your loved ones are trying our best. Guess how much it costs to overstaff an incentive pay person to be put on call? Two dollars and hour! This is if we don’t need them. To my readers, yes you are getting a little brief on how hospitals work or don’t work, however you want to look at it. Instead of having plenty of staff to come in and help your families out, the hospital doesn’t want to pay the two dollars and hour to put them on call.

I wrote this because I am fed up with the system and whoever reads this, I hope it gives you strength to set boundaries. Who runs the hospital? The nurses do. I stay because I want the system changed. I am the change. The only way to change something, is to be in the middle of it.

To my colleagues and peers: you matter more than you know! You are amazing and you are not told enough in this profession. You accepted this high calling from the universe, and you have sacrificed a lot in your life, but you wanted to. It was your calling. Keep strong, obtain strong boundaries, and communicate effectively for what you want! Love and light to all of you during this trying time.