This Nurse Is in a Committed Relationship with Burnout

Welcome to Club Nurse. I'm Colton Lord, your host. By you being here today, it shows me that you are someone who wants to learn, grow, laugh, connect, and just let your emotions flow. We are here to share real stories and hear real-life experiences from real people. You are not alone in this, and Club Nurse is here to show you that. Don't forget to follow the show and share today's episode with someone you love. Now let's dive into today's Hello everybody, welcome back to Club Nurse. My name is Colton Lord, your host of this podcast. Today is another episode in our mini episode series that we have still not named. I'm working on it. We're going to, as I stated in the last episode, if you listened, I am working on finding a name for this series that I'm doing that are like smaller episodes, not like full-length, like full-hour episodes, because I wanted to just like throw little nuggets in there of maybe just like something in my perspective, or maybe something happened in, in my day or my nursing world that I want to share with you that's not going to take a full like 45 minutes, an hour to explain, uh, just something to just chat about for— yap, let's yap for 15 to 20 minutes. Sometimes it'll be current events, it'll be things that I find on the nurse.org website, which is a great resource for any nurse out there to go to and find resources in the nursing world. If you want up-to-date news articles and just current events that are happening, if there's something that's happening in, in the news that is revolving around healthcare or news, I pretty much can guarantee you will find it on the nurse.org website. Any resource if you're looking to find how to get licensure in different states that you may live in or who is in the compact, things about travel nursing, it really is a major resource for nurses. So be sure to check out nurse.org and find all of that stuff there. But yeah, this segment I am working on what we're gonna call it. I don't know yet. I'm brainstorming some things. But yeah, it's just gonna be me yapping Happen to you, uh, sometimes I will have somebody else on to yap with me in a mini episode if it's something that again won't take 30 minutes to an hour to yap about. Oh my gosh, I don't know if you can see this, but girl, the back of my arm, you could literally throw a like 14-gauge IV in that. If I ever come in as a trauma, somebody better be putting in a 14-gauge right there. Yeah. All my ER nurses, you guys would love that. Okay, so anyways, I realized I was heading out of town tomorrow and I needed to get some podcasts recorded, and I thought it would be great to touch on this major buzzword that is constantly talked about in the nursing community, in healthcare, and that is called burnout. And I know before you go roll your eyes, just hear me out, okay? Let's chat about burnout. It's just gonna be a quick little You and me, let's get real. Let's get down and dirty with this, with this burnout, and and talk about it because do I have experience with this? Yes, I do. Way too much more than I care to admit. You can probably again if you're seeing any of this on video, you can probably see the bags under my eyes because I am currently in a cycle of burnout. And yes, I do think it kind of comes in cycles, and that is the direct result of me not setting boundaries with myself. And I think need. Somebody to take control over who picks up my shifts, who schedules me anything, and the things that I am doing in my life. Because it's almost as if when I go to plan things, I do not take into account the fact that I don't plan rest. I don't add rest into my calendar. I don't look at my calendar and think when I have an open day, oh, maybe I should like Relax that day and not do anything, or just take care of myself. No, if I see an open day on the calendar, I immediately think, "What can I fill that with?" Oh, I have plenty of time. Yeah, I can pick up an extra eight hours or twelve hours. Why not? I'm off that day. I don't need the whole day off. Wrong, wrong, absolutely wrong. You need the day off, and I'm talking straight at myself again. You can see, oh my god, the bags under my eyes are unreal. I have. I just finished a four-day stretch, and that was. At my remote job where I do hybrid. So I was in the office a couple of those days, at home the other days. And it doesn't matter what you're doing. It doesn't matter if you sit at a desk all day. I have learned work is exhausting and nobody should be doing it that many days in a row because I'm still doing 12-hour shifts when I am working in the office and it's too much. I worked 48 hours there last week and then finished my hours for this week already. And it's— what is today? It's Tuesday. And I finished my hours for the week because I worked so much. And that's— that is the beauty of nursing, is you can stack your shifts and it makes traveling a lot easier, but it comes at a price. It comes at a price and it takes days to recover. And that's why we get sick and don't take care of ourselves. Because how, how could you imagine that I'm going to go to the gym and eat well during the 4 days? I didn't set myself up for success. I didn't meal prep like I should have. I'm not going to get up between 12-hour shifts and go to the gym. The best I'm going to do is throw a walking pad on the ground. Thank goodness for my remote shifts. That's a lifesaver to get some movement in, by the way. If you're a remote worker, walking pad. I think I spent $120 on Amazon and it was worth, worth the purchase. Anyways, I was venting to one of my very best friends. She actually was my preceptor when I was in nursing school and helped me get my very first job and has continued to just be a great friend. One of my very, very, very best friends to this day. Anyways, she lives She lives in Arizona. I live in Boston. So we were yapping away on the phone the other day, and I was just venting to her about how I am just burnt out and not well. And she made it clear to me, or she brought it to my attention that this happened. This started when I started travel nursing during the pandemic, because again, I have no control over myself apparently in these situations. And the second I had a contract waved in my face, Mm-hmm. That showed a dollar amount that I had never seen. I was like, sure, I'll work 60 hours a week. Where do I sign? Do you need my blood? Okay, whatever you want, girl, I got you. Oh, and that is, that is where my spiral started in the last few years. And I have not hopped off that train, if I'm being honest. I really think that— and when she said it, I was like, oh my God, you're right. You are right. Because I was working through the pandemic in Arizona, but I wasn't working overtime. And when I moved to the East Coast, I took an assignment in Rhode Island and the money they were offering was, like I said, insane. And, or, but you had to sign for 48 hours a week. That was all that they would let me do. And I worked a mid-shift, so I worked 3:00 PM to 3:00 AM, which was okay. But 4 days a week is a lot. And that is where this started for me, because once I started doing that and making that money, it's like I got addicted and I couldn't stop. And I did that. I re-signed the contract. I did. I did that for 6 months. I was commuting from Boston to Rhode Island after I had moved. I'd get off at 3:30 in the morning and I would drive through the snowstorms from Providence, Rhode Island to Boston. I live in Cambridge and it was exhausting and very dangerous. And I look back at it, I'm surprised I didn't crash and roll my car and end up back in the ER as a trauma. Like, what, girl? What was I thinking? But that's just, that's where it started for me. And then I, I continued to just work, find, I got addicted to the money and the chase and it's like, oh my gosh. I can make money in this nursing thing. There's a way to actually make money. It's working yourself to death. That's how you make money doing this. It's ridiculous. Once I started making that money, it was so hard to adjust because mistake on my end, I sort of adjusted my lifestyle to that. Not fully. I never, it wasn't like buying designer bags and buying new car, but you know, the cost of living out here is a little higher than Arizona and I just, I think I adjusted my life a little bit to making that money, like the traveling I was doing. And I got myself into a bind because what I did was I took another contract where I was working 48 hours a week. And I did a little stint between there where I took a staff job in an ICU, but that was exhausting because I had to learn a new specialty and it was just really difficult. And then I didn't like it. And so I went back to the ER traveling 48 hours a week because that's where the money was. And then I just kept doing it. And even when I would Went down to a 36-hour-a-week contract. I was picking up extra every week because I liked that money. I liked once I had a certain bar of how much money I wanted coming in every week. I was like, "I don't want to go below that bar." So as travel nursing does, the pay was decreasing, but I was like, "No, I still want that money. I'm going to keep picking up extra hours to make that money." And here we are. Here we are. I still am picking up way too many hours, and I mean there's some reason for it. You know, some personal life things happened and needed. To make some extra money and there was some financial strain that, you know, I just had to navigate. And I have, I've just worked myself so much and I feel it. My body feels it. And it's true, the old cliché of when you can't, when your cup is empty, how are you supposed to fill anybody else's cup? And I've noticed it in any of my relationships, whether that be romantic or just my friendships or my family. I don't have the patience I used to. And it's hard. I'm struggling. I'm at least aware of it. But, you know, there's things that I need in my life to function fully, and that's I need physical activity. I need to eat well. I need sleep. Oh my God. I think we all need these things. Like, I'm not just some alien that needs these outlandish things. Like, we all need these things. Proper nourishment, physical activity, sleep, time with friends and family, time to relax, just to, like, lay there and read a book. And these are things that I have neglected because I have pushed the pedal to the metal. I have been— I went Crazy doing all the stuff on social media and wanting to do here I am, you know, do the podcast, which I'm loving. Thank you for being here, by the way. I'm not complaining, and then just working crazy hours. And the point I'm making is at some point we have to realize what is it all for if we feel terrible and empty inside? All those things that you're chasing, this job that you're working, anything that you're out there doing—if you are depleted, what is the point? You know, because I ask myself if I work myself this crazy and I feel this terrible tomorrow, somebody says, "Hey bro, you." You've got stage 4 cancer, you've got 6 months to live. I would be like, are you kidding me? Like, this is how I've spent the last couple years because I can't get a grip on my life, on what really matters. And I'm not here to tell you that money doesn't matter. I'm not here to tell you that chasing a dream or working really freaking hard for something that you want is not what you have to do. I'm not saying that sometimes you're not going to have to sacrifice and that you're going to have to work these crazy hours. I'm not saying that that's not something that can or needs to be done in order to achieve something. Because the fact is, if you want to level up, if you want a really, really— like where you're trying to level up, where you're trying to get to the next level, you're trying to chase a dream, and it's not easy to get there— it's not easy for a reason. And you will have to sacrifice, and you will have to lose some sleep, and you will have to do, you know, these long hours. But if you're doing that for a prolonged period of time, what ends up happening is you run out of steam. Okay, the machine cannot go forever. And if you're not doing the maintenance on that machine— let's talk about, let's, let's talk about a car. Okay, you buy a car, it's new, it's beautiful, it's got like— you don't need to worry about the oil change right now, it's got a full tank of gas. Let's talk about it. Okay, you're driving it, you're driving across the country, you're just going, going, going. Feels good for a while. You're there, you have all this motivation, inspiration, the car is just zooming down. And you know, before you know it, oh, okay, the car gets to empty. And what do you do? You put some more fuel in it. And you keep doing this. You repeat the process over and over and over again. But what eventually happens to that car? What eventually happens months later? You need an oil change. You can't just— you may be able to put gas in that, you know, stop at the gas station, fill it up with gas. But at some point, the car is going to break down or not going to work anymore with just that gas because it needs an oil change. It needs the maintenance it needs to have. I don't know. I'm not a car guy. So like, excuse me, but like, you need some stuff changed. I don't know. I know the tires got to be changed. The oil's got to be changed. And I don't know, I've like gone and had things to where they charge me for like rotors or something. I don't know what the hell that does, but transmission, the alternator, I don't know. Okay, those things have to be maintained, and if you don't, the car breaks down. Okay, that's your body. And I don't know why I'm using a car as a reference. Like I said, I know nothing about the car, but I know enough that you have to get the oil changed. And now I don't even remember how long or how often you have to because I drive an electric car, and let me just tell you, it's beautiful because I don't have to get the oil changed. Less maintenance. Anyways, you are the car, okay? That's the point I'm making. If you're not understanding, your body is the car, okay? You may be able to be going, pushing, pushing, pushing, filling up with gas, getting there, sleeping, getting, you know, pushing along, pushing along. But if you don't change the tires, if you don't change the rotors or whatever they're called, if you don't get the oil changed, you're gonna break down. You're gonna get sick, or you're gonna Burn out, which is what has happened to me so many times. And I am, I am really at a point in my life right now where like I am at extreme burnout. And I'm just being real with you. I'm not looking for your sympathy. I don't want you to feel bad for me. These are my choices. And this is something that I am fully aware of and I'm in therapy and I'm working on it. A lot of this, I think, stems from my childhood and my idea of how we're supposed to live our lives. By just working, being crazy busy bees, and like we're a machine, and I just don't want to live that way. And I'm aware of it and I'm working on it. So yeah, that is my 2 cents on burnout. We can really dive into this. I think it would be awesome actually to have maybe like a burnout expert or somebody that could help guide us and give us actual tools because I don't have any for you right now. And I'm just being real. I'm just giving you my experience, maybe make you feel less alone, open the conversation. And I think it's important to talk to somebody about it. I am somebody that likes to carry these things on my own. And when I was talking to my friend about it, I felt so much better. She— I felt that she saw me and understood that I was burning out. And I— because a lot of times I feel guilty, like, oh, I'm not showing up as a good friend. Like, I could be better. But she understands me. That's why it's important to have people in your life who see you, who understand you, and who also are willing to say to you, like, hey, bro, like, Pump the brakes like you're burning out. I can see it. It's not healthy. That's the fact of the matter. See, I'm tired. Okay. Anyways, I need to go finish packing because I'm heading down to Knoxville tomorrow to go see my sister. Sister, sister. I don't know when this releases. I'll probably already be in Tennessee or I'll be back. But anyways, I love you. My name's Colton. Follow me at Colton Allen Lord on Instagram. That's me. One of the nurse daddies. Thanks for being here. This is fun. Thanks for listening to me yap and talk about my burnout and talk about my problems. Blah blah blah. It's really healthy to talk, even if you have nobody to talk to. Grab a mic and start talking. Get a therapist. It's really helpful. All right, I love you guys so much, and we'll see you next time on Club Nurse. Bye! From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to thank you for being here at Club Nurse. I hope you gained something valuable from today's episode, and if you did, remember to share this episode with someone that you love. Follow me on socials at Nurse Daddy. Or ColtonLord17, and be sure to follow nurse.org to stay informed with all of the hottest healthcare topics. Until next time, take care of yourself the way you take care of everyone else. Love ya. Bye.