Trading Tribulations for Triumphs: Helping Seasoned Nurses and allied health professionals rediscover career fulfilment.

You may be at a stage in your clinical career where you’ve seen it all, staff come and go, your work load and responsibilities increase as the staffing levels fall. Then someone tells you there’s a new way of doing things (which is actually an old way dressed up). 

People get short tempered, comments are unpleasant, and relationships get strained. Someone in a senior role tells you; “you should or shouldn’t be doing this, or that” without providing the how or the help, and they walk away. 

You prioritise care, and hope someone else will pick up the pieces. The IT systems that take so long to complete tasks, your own egg timer is running down quicker than you’d like.

At the end of the shift you feel you have to stay longer, to help out, and not pass on too many “daytime” jobs to the night doctor.

You wonder what its all for, why you stay. What happened to that fulfilling career you were experiencing years ago? What can you do that’s different? Change jobs? retire early? Put up with the situation? Become cynical or apathetic?

In a field dependant on empathy, this is not what anyone wants to see or hear.

You are not alone. Even the most dedicated staff can lose their spark after years on the job.

So how can you change your perspective on your current viewpoint, what kind of support could you expect?

🔹Remind yourself of the reasons you joined the profession and write them down.

🔹Look at what’s important to you in your role. Does your job still align with your values?

🔹Identify and address the issues for what they are with the relevant people, with a mutual plan to find a workable solution. Involve another colleague for support.

🔹Discuss the impacts the current situation is having on you. Is it work life balance, feeling disrespected? Or something else.

🔹Offer to facilitate short term assignments, generate your own ideas for this and talk to your colleagues.

🔹Focus on your personal health.

🔹Look for the triumphs in your experiences, for example talking to patients about their journey, their resilience. Shifting your focus from work place frustrations to the stories of the courage of the people you care for.

🔹Remind yourself of the gratitude you have received from patients  and staff.

🔹Seek support from peers in similar situations and discuss helping each other.

🔹Look for opportunities of mentorship, preceptorship helping shape the next generation.

🔹Verbalising if and when, you reach a point where you need a change in your clinical area to prevent burnout, and reignite your interest in your career.

🔹Reflect, reflect, reflect, on your wealth of experience, the healing you have facilitated, and your uniqueness as a carer.

Consider that the current direction you are travelling not longer suits you needs, there are so many more options within healthcare for someone with your experience and skill set that can add incredible value to another area.

Think wide, think options, it's a big world out there. None of us are indispensable in our current environment. The one certainty is that it's it your choice.