I was one of the 75,000 Australian Nurses to quit during the COVID-19 Pandemic - here’s why!
You know the drill: the constant pressure, the never-ending shifts, and that feeling of being in a relentless state of emergency. It's like we're wired to keep going, but at what cost? I (like many of you) hit my breaking point, burnt out 3-4 times, was depressed, over drinking, overeating, hated my life and career and had to step back, not because I lost my passion, but because the system just wasn't built to support us, in any sustainable way. We have chronically dysregulated, stressed out, stretched managers leading teams of overworked, underpaid, under appreciated and overwhelmed nurses – I mean it’s not rocket science, the writing has been on the wall for decades.
We've all heard the talk—throw more money at the problem, bring in more nurses, pay people more money. But let's be real, that's like putting a tiny plaster on a gaping chronic wound. We wouldn't treat our patients like that, so why are we okay with it being the solution for the growing nursing recruitment and retention crisis? Paying people more money, works until it doesn’t, after all I thought we had no money for more nurses? We have seen time and time again, money doesn’t solve stress permanently, yet workplace safety, culture and support has been proven to in the literature!
What we need is a shift towards recognizing, supporting and addressing our mental and emotional needs. A system where it's okay to say, "I'm not okay," not be judged or deemed immediately incapable, and get the support we need from our immediate peers, not from a stranger on a helpline. It's about seeing us as humans first, and nurses second.
I left my nursing career to save myself, pure self-preservation, If I hadn’t, I don’t know where I would be today and what I would be doing. Leaving was my only option. No amount of money, incentives, learning opportunities or reactive band-aid solutions would keep me in the role or attract me back. I mean my managers or hospital didn’t even try to keep me, they don’t want to offer exit interviews, they don’t want to hear the problems, best to just hope the next person is more of a yes person and is either numbed out or does what they're told.
The cost to my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health was too much. The reality is it has taken me 3 years to finally get to a state of not living in constant fight or flight. To improve my self-talk and quieten my inner critic. To heal my nervous system one step at a time, so that I can reconsider what I want from life and my career. We all invest so much into our careers, with many of us left feeling like it’s all a waste of time and a sunk cost, and for many of us, this is a stark reality. Not to mention, that the upcoming generation of nurses who are not tolerating this level of system failure and dysregulation and this is a good thing, it’s time for change.
The current media attention, industry submissions and agendas for change are a crucial first step in the right direction, and yet we must not allow ourselves to be blindly led into believing that more money, more staff, more learning opportunities, more diverse career pathways, bringing back retired staff are the only answers to healing our chronically dysregulated healthcare system. We MUST prioritise retention of the staff already in the system, creating psychological safety in our everyday work. We must rewrite the outdated industry narratives, that keep nurses believing their options are limited and that there’s only one way to do their career. We must prioritise strong, healthy, co-regulated, safe relationships between nurses, their managers, and their MDT peers, so we can think, act, perform and provide the HIGHEST level of nursing care to our patients.
We must prioritise embedding mental and emotional strength and capacity-building education into our nurse education curriculum. So, we can build our capacity to deal with immense adversity, traumatic experiences, burnout, emotional highs, and lows, leading to increased team culture and job satisfaction so that nurses can see their career as a lifelong sustainable and enjoyable idea. Nursing as a career is tough, being a human who nurses and deals with psychological, emotional, and physical abuse and trauma is even tougher. We cannot and must not forget that nurses are humans, who have not been equipped with the tools, training, or support to navigate and deal with this level of stress.
Since leaving nursing, I have been dedicated to being a voice for change, to support nurses who want to make nursing work for them, to heal their burnout, chronic stress, overwhelm and lack of options, to seeing that they are capable of anything they want and that it’s ok to “break” the rules and make nursing work for them. I have so many ideas, thoughts, and things I want to do, to improve the system, to support nurses, to help nurses fall back in love with nursing as a career or to make nursing work for them. Together, we can make a change, and it seems that this change will only happen from the ground up.
How can we give nurses more pay, more staff AND also prioritise their wellbeing, psycholigcal and emotional support, creating more safety in their work, so they can deliver better care? This is the question we MUST focus on.
We know that stressed out, dysregulated, overwhelmed staff don't have access to their critical thinking part of their brain (Pre frontal cortex) due to living and operating from a chronic fight or flight stress response, the evidence shows us that this leads to poorer decision making, impacting our patients. The longer we neglect prioritising nurses mental and emotional wellbeing, the longer we risk patient safety and care, destroy organisational culture and lose excellent staff, who no longer want to risk their registration.
As I wrap up, I want to remind everyone reading this that you are amazing, worthy, and capable of anything you want to achieve, it’s never too late, you are never too “young or old”. You can change the trajectory of your career with one decision, you are in demand, and there’s never been a better time for you to go after what you want, to help you heal your burnout, stress, nervous system so that you can learn to love nursing again or leave it and do something new. All of the above takes time, and thats ok! Nothing worth doing happens overnight!If anything, here has resonated with you, or you feel inspired to share your take on this current agenda, I would love to hear from you – let’s keep the conversation going!
My DMs are always open @highperformancenursing on IG if anyone wants to chat about anything or collaborate on moving this forward!
Liam
I talk about this and more on the High Performance Nursing Podcast here!
