Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 December 2004 19:38:11
One of the reasons I got out of hospital nursing relatively soon (a year after qualifying as a nurse) to work in the community was that I noticed a number of the more experienced nurses were dealing with the crap and distress and all that that they faced every day at work by hardening themselves to it and becoming emotionally more distant from those for whom they were caring. And after not that long I found myself doing it too. Most of the time I could maintain a caring veneer even if inside I was thinking "shut up you old goat!", or other such complementary and edifying thoughts, but occasionally the hardness made its way up to the surface and came out, and it really was quite ugly. Today something happened at work which made me realise that I've started to harden myself in this job too. I know I'm slowly but surely burning out, I know that I've got plans to get out of the NHS and study, at least for a few years, which will do me a lot of good. But I just hate what I'm becoming in the meantime. I know I don't want to be "nice" and "fluffy". But even with the cynical edges, I don't have to be this hard. I still want to be good at my job, which includes the "caring" side of it, even though I know that I don't want to work in a caring profession for ever. That balance though between "caring" and "assertive and not a doormat" is very difficult to maintain, and right now I think I've lost the equilibrium between the two.
Roll on Christmas. I so need to sleep this off.