Sample Student Prof. Lourdes Heuer COMP 2000 DateNursing Burnout: What's to Blame? When many people end up in the hospital, the first person they call out for is their nurse – not a doctor. Nurses have a hands-on relationship with their patients, doing everything from administering medicine to more personal clean ups and emotional care. They are usually the ones running from patient to patient trying to squeeze in as much care as possible in one shift. Consequentially, this often leads to an unfortunate burnout situation. Nursing burnout is known as the loss of motivation, compassion, and ability to deal with the stresses of work, though all nurses deal with it differently. But nurse burnout could be prevented if nursing programs amended their training, hospitals reconsidered staff operations, and nurses themselves made changes to their own personal life management. After all, without nurses who love their jobs, the hospital experience wouldn’t be the same. Nurses need to be able to (almost) always put their patients first. That's what they've learned to do from the start of their education. But nurses often forget that there is a balance needed to maintain their own sanity and health, and nurses are people who must also remember to tend to their own mental and physical needs, too. Otherwise, there are mental and physical tolls that will plague nurses over time, even though they are often kept out of plain sight. Kelli Dunham, an RN since the age of 19, says in her book How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Your Life as a Nurse, that "with a constant sense of urgency that's in the hospital, many nurses don't stop to consider their needs, often skipping a sit-down lunch to tend to their patients.” Often, the pressures of having patients leave the hospital on their own two feet get nurses to trump their own care. Forgetting not to just eat lunches, but often also to take regular bathroom breaks, nurses may be forgetting that when they cut corners for themselves, the hospital is taking a toll not just on their patients, but on them, too. There’s also the toll of patient trauma coming through the hospital doors. Many nurses leave with traumatic images in their heads from things they've had to deal with during their work day. Deaths and other things that can tug at the hearts of nurses often stay with them and can be severely damaging over time. According to Robert Wicks, psychologist and author of Overcoming Secondary Stress in Medical and Nursing Practice, "...as well as unrealistic expectations on the part of patients and health systems, the stakes are now so high for health care professionals that the potential for developing such psychological problems as emotional blunting on the one hand or extreme affectivity on the other is quite great." Often, coping mechanisms involve suppressing their emotions. Many people refer to this as "bottling," and when a bottle of soda is shaken enough, the top comes flying off and everything comes spilling out, .