One year and four months – I’m guessing this is a predictable time frame for what I’m experiencing.
Burnout, moral injury, call it what you will – everything (except writing) has become a struggle. Especially work.
Let’s repeat that: especially work.
My ER (and I’m sure this could be said of ERs everywhere) is not in a good place.
A mass exodus of nurses post COVID has left us critically understaffed, struggling to cope with surging numbers of patients. There aren’t enough nurses to adequately care for them, which leads to further instability in what was already an unstable environment.
Patients, angry at not being seen in a timely manner, lash out at nurses drowning under unsafe patient loads. Verbal abuse and threatening behavior is the norm, heaped upon nurses struggling to practice safely without the resources to do so.
I am left feeling numb, the images of death and suffering from COVID always there, the loss of my medical director to suicide part of this senseless tragedy.
I realize this is a phase of grieving that, hopefully, will pass.
But it’s left me questioning the point of my job, and “leadership’s” tone-deaf response leaves me feeling further stranded.
The life raft is slowly coming apart, leaving one faced with the prospect of staying above water with no one to count on except yourself.
It’s a lonely feeling.