Adjusting temperature and speed sounds like something to be done to a washing machine, or maybe a car. Yesterday, I attended a workshop on Personal Resiliency held at the Coast Victoria Hotel. Sponsored by BCNU*, such workshops are held for those of us in the BC nursing contingent that have experienced burn-out (a very old term) in the workplace. In the thirty minute walk to the workshop, I reflected on the nature of my career while also reflecting on nature in the city. Stopping to take a photo or two along the way under grey skies decorated with orange-red leaves falling like rain in the still morning, I was struck by the great resilience of this natural world. I was certain I would be the very, very oldest still working nurse in a group of young, maturing nurses. Thought it odd that I should be attending such a workshop at this late stage in my career, but as always kept putting one foot in front of the other to see, to learn and to reconnect with nursing colleagues, no matter their age of experience, to have my own abilities to adjust the temperature and speed of my life validated and shored up.
The group was a small group of twenty one nurses. A rough estimate of the average span of careers in the room was thirty years! Only two of us were nurses with under 10 years of nursing experience. Everyone else were nurses, still working in a variety of nursing careers, from thirty years to fifty years! From Emergency Room to Intensive Care, Dialysis to Withdrawal Management, Paediatriecs to Community nursing with the Frail Elderly there was over six hundred years of active nursing experience in the conference room. None of us looked crisped on the edges, maybe a bit tired but good strong energy in the room. We sat in a circle and were assured that we would not be singing or role playing, just telling our stories. Facilitated by two experienced psychologists, they walked with us through the likes and dislikes of our careers. They showed us that our reactions to any stressors are incredibly normal, coming from deep within our brains as physiological responses to the many traumas. Not just traumas directed at us, but the ‘vicarious’ traumas around us that we see behind the nurses station and within our patient populations on a daily basis. Our learned behaviours create the nuanced ways we, sometimes, allow those responses to manifest. Most responses are completely instinctual. While it was tempting to carry on about completely valid organizational stressors affecting us, we were redirected to the actions we each take to provide compassionate and therapeutic nursing care for our patients. The final discussions about personal resilience and the tools needed to make those adjustments was the most helpful and validating for me.
At the end of this most satisfying day, I realized that I had been more intensely focussed in the last almost two years, maybe more, on those secondary traumas that I, as one individual, am unable to fix. In short, stepping back from our work lives, stepping into our personal lives to care for ourselves, and accepting our strengths and our vulnerabilities. We do this with our families and our friends, time for reflection and for exercise, for laughter and fun never forgetting to let go of the unfixable.
“There is a cost to caring. Professionals who listen to
stories of fear, pain and suffering may feel similar fear,
pain and suffering because they care. Sometimes we feel
we are losing our own sense of self to those we serve.”
~ Charles Figley, Ph.D
*BCNU: British Columbia Nursing Union
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