It’s Time to Clock Out!

You're sitting at the dinner table, listening to your young daughter recount her adventures from preschool that day. Her face is full of theatrical joy, and you're the ONE person she couldn't wait to share it with. Except you can't share something with someone who's not present. And even though you're physically sitting at the table with her, your mind is somewhere else. Perhaps frantically closing the mental browser windows left open from another chaotically hectic workday?

Your daughter, now noticing that you aren't really listening, trails off in disappointment. The stab of #nursemom guilt begins to percolate out from your broken heart and exhausted mind. In balancing #momlife and #nurselife, you really can't win for losing, huh?

If you can relate to this feeling, you're not alone. It's not uncommon for the struggle to attain work-life-balance to always feel like a Sisyphus-inspired quest. (That would be, in a word, futile, for those not up to speed on their Greek mythology.) The problem is, perpetuation of the idea that there is some kind of equitable and static balance possible only adds to the stress levels of never getting there, and that needs to change.

Even before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, being so crazy busy at work that things like oh, I don't know getting time to urinate, was largely normalized. Then, BOOM, the crisis thrust upon our healthcare system incited breakdowns on such a profound level, I'm not sure any area of nursing remained unscathed.

Before we might have ruminate about a pain level reassessment we might have missed, or a request for a warm blanket that went unanswered. Now, it's images of patients gasping for their last breaths as they leave this world. It's those same patients who, as they depart, may or may not be aware of their families, all crowded together into a measly zoom rectangle for the occasion. It's those same families coming to collect a patient belonging bag instead of their loved one. As nurses, there's no amount of PPE we can wear to protect us from absorbing that kind of emotional weight, multiple times a shift, for months end. 

The additional stress we carry home now is not that of a few unchecked boxes, it's an unending assault of images from a day full of tasks that have no task-based solution.

When our mental tornados are existential in nature, it's vital that we separate ourselves from them. Not just for our self-preservation, but for our family's as well. We need to be able to clock out from our shift, but then also detach from any-work related thought. Fortunately, there are a few habit tweaks you can start TODAY, to ease the “balance burden.” 

Decide that your days off will remain so.

And then turn off your phone to incoming work calls on those days. It's a lot easier to hold your ground in answering “no,” if you can't be asked to come in the first place. This is a hard boundary to hold on many levels knowing what it's like to work short-staffed, for one. But you need to put YOU first. And know that that's okay.

Detachment is a verb, not a noun.

You need to break the mental fixation from rerunning the day's shift in your mind. To do this, it's necessary to force your mind to redirect and focus elsewhere. One of the best ways to begin the process of detaching from work stress is to form an after-work ritual. When our brains and bodies have been subjected to high stress levels, we require a recovery phase.

Make a commitment to yourself to create a 30 minute buffer period after you clock out. Whatever your definition of relaxation is, taking a walk, doing regular exercise, listening to a podcast, or blasting death metal while you sob into your steering wheel on the drive home (kidding!) build it into a routine before you walk through your front door. The key here is to be intentional and to plan something that's enjoyable enough that you look forward to it every day. Your brain will enjoy a hit of dopamine just in its anticipation alone 

Complete a full-body assessment of the support you receive at work.

Does your work culture motto go something like this: “extreme self-neglect”? Expectations such as working when you're sick or hustling through lunch breaks, or enduring long, pointed stares if you have to (gasp) pump for your infant at home, should not be the norm. Yet, we've all worked in environments where this is totally acceptable to us, as evidenced by our tolerance of it. My worry is that places that only dabbled in these practices before will emerge from COVID-craziness knowing just how far they can push nurses. Don't let them.

Nurses have the right to work in an environment that goes beyond encouraging self-care; it must insistently demand it. Without that leg to stand on, we will habitually incur more and more stress until we burn out and fade away. Away from nursing, that is. And Lord knows it's already started to happen . Advocating for better working conditions at your own place of employment is the most effective way to become part of the collective voice advocating for better working conditions for all nurses.

Because here's the thing: it's not just the threat of work-life imbalance that looms upon us individually; it's the helter-skelter pace that is suffocating the profession as a whole. For so many nurses, our work can feel like our life. And it's more than okay to take pride in what we do. But, as parents, it's not all that we are. We also need to make sure that spending quality time with our families is part of our daily schedule, and as mothers, we only get so many dinnertime conversations with our children.