 Hello guys, welcome back to this video. Today I want to talk about a lot of things actually. I want to talk about how as nurses we take care of patients on some of the worst days of their lives, literally worst days of their lives. For example, a mom who just found out she lost her full term infant before it was born or a ten-year-old boy who got hit by a drunk driver while he was just riding his bike home from school or a spouse who's been married to his wife for 47 years and finds out that his wife has terminal cancer and she's got two weeks left to live. And as nurses a lot of times we are experiencing these things with our patients right alongside them, hearing this news and being that first person that is there with them when they're experiencing these terrible situations. With the exception of, you know, having a wonderful birth in what not, most areas of nursing people are not in the hospital to just have fun and have a grand old time. They are there because they are having a probably terrible time. And as an ICU nurse, I see people literally on their worst days. Like on the edge of death their families right there watching their loved ones suffer so to speak. Now of course we do things to try not make people suffer but they're not seeing their loved ones at their best. And it can be a lot on a nurse, on a person to experience these things with our patients. And so I want to talk a little bit more about this because a lot of us tend to think that we just have to experience these things and then it we just have to go home and it has to be fine and we're just basically numb to it all. And I don't think that we would be as good of nurses if we were just numb to every single emotion that we are experiencing. It's important to remember that we are still humans. We are not robots. It's okay to feel the emotions that your patients are feeling and the families are feeling. It's okay to hurt with them. But we have to have this healthy level of separation between being invested with our emotions with that family and being able to leave that at work and go home and still be a present wife and take care of your kids or a present husband, a great friend, a great co-worker, a great whatever and being happy in your personal life. And I will admit when I first started the ICU and I first started as a nurse, it was really really hard for me to separate these two. I just I cared so much. I just wanted to invest all of me into the patients I was taking care of. But then I was going home and I was getting burnt out and I was pouring from an empty cup and I just was not a very nice wife and I was not a great friend because I just felt so emotionally drained when I got home. And I realized over time and with experience that this was not sustainable and I needed to make a change. And so I wish I had some magical advice as far as this is what you have to do to not get burnt out, to not take home work to your personal life. But honestly I think a lot of it comes with time, exposure, experience and a lot of self-care. And I think that is the biggest piece of advice I can give you is that you have to take care of yourself. And this is so hard to do because as nurses we're just naturally giving caring people. We give, give, give, give, give to everyone else in our lives that we forget to actually take care of ourselves. And I'm guilty of that especially now that I'm a mom. I put my daughter first before everything and I just have a hard time like taking an hour break to myself because then I start feeling guilty that I, why am I investing this time in myself? And I think a lot of us feel that way when we're doing self-care whether that's going to the gym or hanging out with a friend or drinking a glass of wine, cooking dinner, getting your house clean, taking a nap. Why do we have such a hard time enjoying these things for ourselves? If this is resonating with you or if you're a person who's going home from work and you're feeling overly anxious or overwhelmed, you're feeling not well rested because maybe you're waking up multiple times a night or having a hard time falling asleep because you're thinking about scenarios and your patience or maybe you're snapping at your spouse or not being as good of a boyfriend or girlfriend or friend in general, then we need to step back and reevaluate how we are managing the stress that we are seeing and experiencing at work. We need to have healthy outlets when we go home so that way we can go back and still be a good nurse. I'll admit I went to therapy for this probably about a year ago. I made a video on it a while ago. I was really struggling after I gave birth to my daughter. I was on maternity leave and I went back from maternity leave and I just was looking at every single patient as if they were someone's mom or someone's kid and I just was having a harder time separating myself from my personal life and my work life and it really started to bother me. I started to think every worst-case scenario was gonna happen to me or to my daughter and it just really ate me alive and was very very difficult and so I actually went to therapy for it. I made a whole video on it like a year ago but it was really helpful to just talk to someone and to have someone help rationalize my fears and anxieties and give me healthier ways to think about these things. Sometimes it's hard to reprogram your brain to think in a different manner but with time obviously it can get better but yeah I would encourage you if therapies you're jammed like seriously go to therapy it's super super helpful. I used better help which is this is not sponsored that video was but I used better help and it was on an app and I was able to just text or email my therapist and it was nice because like again I have a hard time being like okay let me just go to therapy for an hour and you know leave my daughter here and with my husband or whatnot I just I feel guilty about it so this was like a non-guilty way to take care of myself anyways I feel like I'm rambling a lot but this is a subject I'm really really really passionate about because as much as you love nursing if you are investing so so so much of yourself into your career that you are not enjoying your personal life then there's this like misbalance why am I why does that sound weird your scales not balanced and you're gonna burn out and how can we be a nurse for a career of 40 50 years whatever you decide to do and not get burnt out if you are just constantly giving giving giving giving but you're not giving back to yourself anyways if this resonates with you awesome I hope you find this helpful if you're really really really really struggling to the point of like being severely depressed and having thoughts about harming yourself or others I will have the link down below to the national suicide hot line you can also chat with them online and it's free and you can get some help that way and I'd love to hear your guys's personal thoughts and stories on this if you've experienced this personally I also sent out emails with similar content to this and so if you want to be subscribed to my email list that link is down below as well but other than that I hope you guys enjoy this video and I'll see you in my next video bye