Latest / Nurse Leadership Dumpster Fire / The Rest of Forever: Burning out as an Experienced Nurse Leader
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to the Nurse Leader Dumpster Fire Podcast. I am your co-host, Cindy Marit. speaker-1: your co-host, Teresa Higby. We are both nurse leaders and we created this podcast to share our most challenging mistakes we have encountered in our nurse leadership journey. Hopefully sharing these mistakes and lessons will help you avoid these on your own journey. We welcome all aspiring current and seasoned nurse leaders to tune in as we hope to bring honest, tangible, and valuable lessons, tips, and tricks, regardless of where you are in your nurse leadership journey. speaker-0: We need to note that while Teresa and I are both employees of the VA, that this podcast is not a reflection of or endorsed by the VA. This podcast endeavor is separate from the VA affiliation. Our stories will be adapted to protect the anonymity of staff and colleagues that we've interacted with, but we will do the best to convey the gist of our story and the take-home lessons. We will of course also be protecting any potential patient identities to comply with HIPAA and privacy laws. Thanks for listening. Good morning, Teresa and audience. speaker-1: Good morning. We are recording this lovely Saturday morning and we want, we have a topic we want to share with you. So kind of in the first episode was about the first 30 days as a new manager. And then some other things, the next episode was about the next layer of things as a leader. And this one, I wanted to talk a little bit about this, about what do you do for the rest of forever? Five years in. Maybe you're in leadership for 10 years. Some people do stay in that long. Some people go in and out, you know? And so I just kind of wanted to talk about what that looks like as a long-term position because leadership long-term is hard. And one of the biggest things we are going to combat is going to be just like, I don't know if you've experienced this Cindy, when you were a nurse, but when I was a nurse, I experienced different levels of burnout throughout my career. So like at year one, I was like, what did I get myself into? And then I was... Then I jumped back into learning and like trying to grow and be better. then, and then year three to five, somewhere in there, I can't remember exactly anymore, but I was kind of like, I can't do this forever. did I do? And then, and it's the same thing, I think, with leadership. So I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So in trying to prepare for this episode, I was trying to do some research and like see what's out there. And there's tons of information out there on preventing nurse leadership, just nursing burnout, not leadership burnout, but there's very little about leadership burnout. But yeah, I've definitely been burned out as a staff nurse and I've been burned out as a leader. And I think like after doing some research on the inner webs, and thinking about my own experiences. I think that there's different reasons we get burned out. I think like the most commonly understood one is that you get burned out because the workload's too heavy, which is definitely an issue in leadership. You know, like it's like the list of to-dos never ends. And there's always new things coming down the pipe that you have to roll out. And there's always little fires you have to put out. So it's For sure, one of the reasons you can burn out is from just being overburdened and definitely experienced that as well. But I've also been burned out before because I was bored. speaker-1: Yeah. I know we already talked about this in a different episode or somewhere, but also just not setting boundaries or scheduling like rest and like over just overworking yourself, not having those things in for yourself. speaker-0: But like, think like one of the reasons I decided to get out of frontline manager management and go into a chief nurse level or director level of nursing was because I am very uninspired by routine day-to-day taffiness, which probably managers have to do a lot of because you're scheduling, you're timekeeping, you're managing education. Like there's stuff that you have to be like, working on all the time and it's like always the same tasks. That felt really inspiring to me. The other reason, the third reason I at least myself can identify reason for burnout is misalignment of values. So like if what I believe in is a priority that fills my cup, if I don't have space or an atmosphere that supports that, which can be for a variety of reasons, but if I don't have, if my personal values don't align with the values where the unit or the organization needs to go, and I can't focus on the things that are important to me, that also is I mean, I think it's a level of burnout, but it's also like, I just feel kind of depressed when that happens. speaker-1: I think misalignment of values is a very common issue that we often don't recognize. A lot of us go through life and we don't even consider or think of what are our values because you should be living your values in all aspects of your life. And when you're not, and we all have to do this sometimes, you have to reevaluate. Like I don't, I can't say that I am perfect at this all the time and making sure everything I'm doing is always in alignment with my values. Cause sometimes life pops up and you just like, start going through the motions without realizing that you're not doing that. So I think it's easy to do that. Some people do it better naturally and others of us have to like think about it more. But I think that's a major one. And I think ⁓ kind of how we have talked in the past also is like one of the big challenges as a nurse is when it's just, can happen in leadership too, but here's a basic example. As a, as a bedside nurse, for example, a misalignment in values is respecting people's dignity. Right? So you have a family member that comes in to the ER, to hospice, to whatever area you work in, but the family decides to change their mind. But the patient already does have something written down, but the family can in fact reverse some of that. And that is always super tricky to watch happen. And it is a misalignment for a lot of us, or it causes you some moral injury. a similar thing can happen as a leader. speaker-0: I was gonna say like that sounds like maybe the flip-flop of that is the moral injury. And I guess we really haven't talked about moral injury and leadership, but I think you're right. Like for example, if you work for an organization that will not allow you to up your staffing needs, like let's say your, like COVID was a great example when there was so many sick patients and they were dying all the time. Flux of patients was so high and People were leaving the units in droves, but even if you could hire nurses, you know, there were like budget caps or there were like, there was an experience I had where we were super short and we had really sick patients and I wasn't allowed to cap our beds. And you know, like basically putting us in situations that were unsafe. And so I felt like that was like a moral injury to me because I was like, I'm not doing right by my staff or the patients. This feels wrong. And so, yeah, I think that's a good example. So I was, so basically what I did my research because I wasn't really sure how to approach this is I just like asked Google what causes leadership burnout. And I got like some really generic stuff and it seemed very similar to what you might find for just generalized nurse burnout, but it was, or like recommendations to not burnout, which was like, protect your time and energy, which we've talked about, leave on time. Say no, don't say yes to everything you're asked to do. Work on delegation and teamwork. Give away the tasks that don't require your specialty, your expertise. Let your staff step up and help out with some of those things. Making sure that you're doing your mental wellness stuff like we talked about in a previous episode. Going out on vacation and getting in nature and doing the things that ground you. speaker-1: Yeah, I think I agree with that. speaker-0: ⁓ and then this was an interesting one I found that was actually this came from. I have the link here, but I'm having trouble remembering exactly where I found it. It was a link from, I think it was from like an NIH article. And when I went to look at it, it was actually related to nurse burnout, not nurse leadership burnout. But I thought it was interesting. It said, adopt the 42 % rule. Research suggests that high performers should aim to spend at least 42 % of their time resting, recovering, or in low effort activities. speaker-1: Yeah, I was actually reading that as well. Have you heard of that before? I have not heard of that, but lately it's actually something I have been forcing myself to implement. And it is challenging for me because you know me, I like to do a lot of things, but there are some days I come home from work and I'm feeling tired and I have so many things to do and I don't let myself do a bunch of stuff. speaker-0: Yep. Good. That's good for you. speaker-1: I have, and it's been since, and what I've been doing is like, okay, yes, you have a bunch of laundry. Yes, you have a bunch of this. Yes, you need to do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can do one of those things and then you're sitting and resting on the couch. And so that's how I like have been, but it does mean that I'm not getting as many things as accomplished as I used to, but I'm trying not to operate from a place of constantly I'm on fire. speaker-0: It's a surprising amount of time though. 42%, that's like close to 50%. And so like, this means like, speaker-1: Can we include sleeping in that so that- speaker-0: I so. want to see the same thing as part of that. don't know how else you would, like, how would you work full time? 42 % of your time. But I do think it would be hard to like have two jobs and live. I right? I mean, even like, even doing this podcast, like I love doing this podcast, but it is time consuming, you know? Like we just spent an hour troubleshooting our sound again. speaker-1: Exactly. speaker-0: before we could even sit down and record. like this, even doing this takes up like a chunk of your time where you're trying to figure things out and like not have shitty content where we're just like, what are we talking about? speaker-1: Yeah, agreed. So in all of this and the rest of forever, I'm going to jump a little bit. Sorry, everybody. But I wanted to talk about, Cindy has a lot of notes and things, but I wanted to jump to something that both Cindy and I frequently struggle with intermittently. And I think most leaders do at times during their career, unless they're just completely perfect. And I'm really glad for those people. High five. I wish I could be you, but I'm not. I, you talked about this recently about feeling like a failure. ⁓ and like, I look at my team right now and I've looked at my team and I, and I sometimes I'm like, my team is, I know my team is the best. think they're all great. They have different strengths, they have different weaknesses, but I literally love different aspects of all of that. And I really enjoy my team a lot. And that's not just saying that because I don't even know if they'll ever even listen to this and I don't really care. But. I genuinely love each of them for different reasons. They all have different skills. I, and some of them, their weaknesses do impede some of our goals, right? But guess what? So do some of mine. And when I fail, I feel like I let the whole team down. And lately my, ⁓ what I think is a good communication strategy, I've been gotten some feedback from my team that it wasn't. So. speaker-0: The fact that they can tell you that though, that's the cutest to you. Not all staff feel like they can give their manager negative feedback. And so they clearly feel like they can say that to you. So that says a lot about you and how you're presenting yourself. So before you get all on the failure side, good job on that. speaker-1: good. We were having a discussion about, so what I did is, ⁓ I'm going to give the example because this isn't anything private or anything. So basically what was happening is we have been increasing the number of mock codes we're offering in the hospital because for a while with COVID and everything else, they essentially disappeared and there was only one person in charge of trying to run all the mock codes for the entire facility, which our campus is big. And so essentially what was happening is they weren't happening because you know, one person can meet that need. First thing I did was I got more people trained in ACLS and BLS so that I could have more people running mock codes. And so that worked. But now we're finally actually doing a lot, but we're doing so many that there's a lot on our calendar and people are missing that they were in charge of one. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: And so one of the things I did is I would, I would schedule, come through a portal to me or to more than just me, cause I don't like any one thing just to be on one of us, but to me and three other of my team members in case we're off, cause all of our schedules vary as well. I'm the only Monday through Friday consistent one though. So what I had done was when I assign a mock code to someone, I put them as the required, and then I find, check their calendars and outlook and I look for what's going on. And I look, I'm like, okay, this person can run this one that day. And they all have said they want to. So this isn't something I'm just like forcing them to do. It's a discussion we've had and I know they do. And some of them even are like, I would, really enjoy these. They're fun for me. So I'm like, okay. And I keep that in my mind. So I have been like assigning them to their thing and saying which drill it's going to be. Cause we have some BLS type drills as well for those areas that don't need a full mock code in their area, but they definitely need to know at least how to initiate BLS and what the beginning steps are until the ACLS team arrives. I put it on their calendar as you're the required person and to, and one or two optional instructors in case something pops up and someone needs to back up. Well, I guess what was happening with my team is they would see that optional and think, well, we don't need three instructors there. So I'm not going. Yeah. I had assigned them to run it. And so we talked about that and what that should look like differently on their calendars. And they're like, can you put my name in the invite as I'm Like X, or Z is running this drill. And, the other issue is I'm also putting the location. So now the invite's going to be like this long, but you know, and then we have some other ones that are a little bit more optional that I want them depending on their schedule to assign themselves to. ⁓ so, because I'm not the only one assigning these, there are some that we're trying to do on the fly, but like somewhat planned, like they're on our calendar to make sure we do some. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: interdisciplinary mock codes, like, hey, we're going to do this today, we're going to do it here, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, that was a major communication gap that I didn't recognize I was doing because I thought that was helpful, but they were like, no, it's not. we, so we, had a discussion about calendar management as well, because when you're newer into these types of roles. speaker-0: in a calendar. speaker-1: So it was fun. It was a good discussion. We learned some gaps on both sides. I learned that I could do better in making sure I'm clear in what I need and that all the invites are consistent. And then they were like recognizing, ⁓ when I see all of those, I'm ignoring half of them. And I was like, you need to manage your calendar. And that was my back to them is, and I wasn't trying to be rude. was just kind of like, like, When you see stuff, I'm like, get the things off that are not for you. So you're not feeling overwhelmed. I was like, all the stuff you know you're not going to go to at the beginning of the week, just get them off so that you can see the things you know you need to do and organize your week. And they were like, ⁓ speaker-0: Okay. You have a question if you're like, ⁓ I see that I'm on optional. So I'm just going to like ask your boss. You put me on here's optional, but is it really optional or you know, like, do you actually want me to go? speaker-1: Right. The funny thing is, is we did already have a discussion about that. The ones that they are sent to optional, we already discussed in our team meeting three or four times about saying, if you can go to these extra ones and you're in there as optional, please accept or decline the invite. And I told them I would be on as tentative for a backup because I'm also an instructor and I'm more unhappy to fill in when I need to. But I, and that's one of the things I also like to do. I try to not just. be a leader, try to also be able to jump in where I can. Cause I think that's simple. But anyway, I was just thinking that failure of communication and whatnot. was, it was rough. felt a little bit like. speaker-0: for sure. speaker-1: I felt a little bit like I was not doing the right thing by my team and being inconsiderate of their calendars and their time and not recognizing that I was doing that. And that felt, I was like, Ooh, oops. Thank you all for joining us. Do you have anything else to say, Cindy? speaker-0: I don't think so. I just, think this more than anything reminds me why we really want our, you guys, our audience to come and reach out to us. Yes. If you have experiences, we would love to hear them. You can email us at our aria nursecircle.com email addresses. can send us a DM on Instagram, put a comment in one of the platforms if you're where you're watching this. But we really want to hear your experiences and I want to hear what is working well for you. If you guys have other things that are helping you manage burnout and feel inspired, like what are they? We want to know about it. speaker-1: If we can keep the good leaders in by developing a community, think nursing as a whole would would benefit. And I think that is part of what we are hoping to achieve here. speaker-0: chemicals. speaker-1: It is, is it not? I mean, that's my vision. I really speaker-0: I want to make when I became a leader, like I avoided it for 10 years. I was being told I should go into management for 10 years. And I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to micromanage. I don't want to be a babysitter. And then I don't know, maybe it was from talking to you, Teresa, of just realizing I can define this however I want. I don't have to be a micromanaging leader. so I think just even saying it doesn't have to be like this just because it's been like this for the past 57 billion years. That's exaggerating, obviously. We're happy to be like that. We can do better for ourselves. Nurses are one of the largest healthcare cohorts in the country. speaker-1: obvious. workforce. It's one of the largest workforce in general. speaker-0: Yes. And even so, even if you take just the leaders out of that, by normal, just like logic, we're going to have a lot more leaders in nursing than we probably do have in any other individual workforce. And so we have got to find ways to rally together and really find ways that we can be successful. Cause when we're successful, our teams are successful. And then you're like, I think how Teresa and I feel, I feel successful when my team feels successful. that's nothing gives, it fills my cut more than watching the people I am supporting rise to the occasion and be them best, their best selves. speaker-1: Yeah, agreed. I think so true. I feel like it was an important episode to have. ⁓ We definitely want to know what are your plans to manage your career for the rest of forever. speaker-0: Yep. All right. Thanks for the great discussion, even with all the technical difficulties, It was still fun. Right. Bye. speaker-1: fun. ⁓ Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to us and joining our Nurse Leadership Dumpster Fire podcast. If you have any ideas on topics or want to connect with us, you can reach us on Instagram at nurseleader underscore dumpster fire underscore podcast or via email at teressa at aria-nurse-circle.com or cindy at aria-nurse-circle.com. speaker-0: If what we've been talking about resonates with you, please like and subscribe to support our channel. Thanks and bye!