I love (most of, haha) my patients. I love helping them and making them feel better, whether just bringing them a warm blanket to make them feel cozy or doing chest compressions to revive them. After all, that’s why we’re nurses, right? We want to help and save people, and we love the challenge and the feeling that we are positively changing people’s lives.

But it’s not so easy, as we nurses know! There is understaffing, ‘difficult’ (an inclusive term) patients and family members, a poor computer charting system, for starters… greater responsibilities and expectations, and more regulations and audits. Over the years, I’ve had good and bad days, and sometimes, the bad days turn into bad weeks, months, and even years…. I quit nursing at one point until I returned to work the next day.

Many of my fellow nurses have helped me through the thick and thin of my nursing career. Being able to share frustrations and tears, get encouragement, reassurance, and inspiration are all things we all help each other with, whether it’s been a terrible shift or an emotionally/physically/mentally draining long period.

So, I want this to be a place where nurses can come to get positive energy again, learn to take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others, be inspired, and be reminded of why we became nurses in the first place—that it is what we really still want to do! Let's use this forum as a source of inspiration to uplift and motivate each other.

Please share your ideas and experiences here! What have you done over the years to keep from burning out? Or to come back from burning out? Your stories, jokes, inspirations, and motivations are all needed here! Sometimes we get our inspirations from our fellow nurses, sometimes the sickest patient can crack the funniest joke! What class or seminar do you recommend to learn how to deal with burnout? What do you do to simplify your life? to take care of yourself? to rejuvenate? to get motivated? to love nursing again? Let's empower each other with self-care strategies.

We are Breaking Burnout here!

Bonnie Kitahata, RN