We all know what it's like to have a day or shift that
hangs on to you even after you leave work. No matter what you do, you can't let it go. Like a song stuck in your
head, the day gets stuck in the mind.
A Mistake at Work
First off, acknowledge the day. What is it that is bothering you about the
day? If something went wrong, go ahead
and think about it when you leave work.
Trying to ignore a thought is like trying to ignore an elephant walking
around in your brain. The trick is to
allow a certain amount of time, then end it.
Give yourself 30 minutes to concentrate/consider/even dwell on what went
wrong with the day. Life happens, there
will be some bad days, and this was one of them. If you made a poor choice, or mistake, it's
time to say it “was” a bad decision, now, however it's a “lesson” that I've
learned. You can't change it, but you
can learn from it, which you have almost certainly done. Think about it on the drive home, and then
when you have gone over it, thought of how to not let it happen again, let it
go. When you begin to unwind for the
evening, if it bothers you again, consider writing the scenario, or the details
of the day down. Go over it, and read it
as if it happened to someone other than you.
That allows you to put it into perspective; you are almost always easier
on others than on yourself.
Loosing
a Patient
If you had a patient under your care for any length of
time, there is a good chance you have developed an attachment to them. Because you are a caring nurse, this is
impossible to avoid, you care about people.
Because of that, when there is a loss of a patient, you feel a sense of
pain and loss yourself. What amplifies
this is the fact that you are not family or close friend, so your grief must be
contained within, you have other patients to care for. Pushing the sense of loss aside is very
difficult on the mind, it actually makes it hang on in your mind. There are options to help you move
forward. If there were other nurses that
cared for the patient, perhaps a very short memorial service or even a tribute
in the hospital chapel. If you were the
only nurse familiar with the patient, consider a goodbye letter, and just hold
on to it, or even better, write a nice letter to the family telling them how
fond of their loved on you were.
Condolences to a family will mean something special to them, and be a
way for you to put some closure into your mind.
Worked Disputes
There will be times that you may not agree with a
coworker, and it's easy to be a little off on your day when this happens. Or a doctor that is having a bad day can take
it out on you, without it being anything personal, they just had to vent at
someone and you were the chosen one. Either way, it can make an 8 or 12 hours shift seem more like 16 or 24
hours, very unpleasant hours.
A dispute with a coworker can usually be resolved by
simply talking things over. Ask them if
you could meet for 15 minutes in private, and discuss the issue at hand. Odds are you will work things out and move
on. Once things are resolved, it allows
the mind to be resolved as well, in other words, the brain takes a break. If the problem is a doctor being indifferent,
try to overlook it, you never know what they have dealt
with that day. If it's too much, alerts
your supervisor, doctors must be respectful of nurses, and hospitals will
enforce that.
It's not impossible to let a bad day go; just face it,
go over for a while, then let it go. It's in the past.
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