Working in healthcare gives you opportunities to help people, learn new skills, make a difference in your community, and challenge yourself. While rewarding, working in healthcare can also be stressful. Mistakes can have life-changing and even life-ending effects. Building and maintaining confidence while managing nursing stress levels is key to enjoying a long, healthy career without becoming burned out.
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Building confidence
It’s normal for nurses to feel overwhelmed and unsure at work. New nurses are especially vulnerable to feeling overwhelmed and anxious when they go to work each day. Whether it is your first day at a new job or an unfamiliar diagnosis, it is important to have confidence in your ability to learn, problem-solve, and work with others.
While a few years of experience can help you feel more confident at work, true confidence is really about believing in your ability to tackle a challenge.
Most nurses find that there is always more to learn. What is standard practice one day may be deemed unsafe the next. Medicine is constantly advancing and changing. Even nurses with decades of experience will come across something new most days that they work. Confident nurses do not think that they know everything. Instead, they understand that they have the ability to learn new things and adapt to new challenges.
Find an organization that supports growth
As you send in applications and apply for jobs, look for an organization that will support you in your journey to becoming a confident registered nurse. Things to look for include generous orientation schedules, mentorship programs, continuing education, and a culture of collaboration.
Remember that people want you to succeed
It is normal to feel like all eyes are on you when you start a new job. Remember, your boss, fellow nurses, physicians, and patients want you to do well. You have an entire community of people behind you who are on your team.
Nobody expects you to know everything
While it is important to understand the basics of your job and know what you have to do to keep your patients safe, remember that nobody expects you to know everything. It is more than okay to ask questions or look things up in your reference book if you are unsure. It is much better to ask a question you feel silly about than to make a mistake that can harm a patient.
Related: Building Your Credibility and Team Skills: Building Your Own Credibility On and Off the Team
When in doubt, talk it over with a trusted co-worker
Even experienced nurses talk things through with each other to find solutions to patient problems. If you ever feel uncomfortable with an order, worried about a patient, or concerned about safety, find someone to talk to. Most nurses are more than happy to talk through a problem with you, walk you through a procedure, or help you make a plan for your day.
Managing nursing stress
As you progress in your career and gain confidence, you may find that different things about the job start to cause you stress. While your confidence and knowledge will grow with time, you will still face the stresses of caring for sick patients, dealing with family members, facing staffing issues, finding broken equipment, and looking for solutions to medication shortages.
Learning to manage nursing stress is one of the most important things you can do for yourself throughout your healthcare career.
Ask for help
The first thing you should do when you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed is: ask for help. Delegate when you can. Call on your charge nurse or manager when you simply have too much on your plate. It is easier for your team to assist when you make specific requests, such as “Can you check a blood sugar level in room 14?” rather than just complaining about being too busy.
Help others
Every once in a while, you’ll be lucky enough to have an easy shift. On those days, look for ways to help other nurses. Not only does this build trust and improve the culture of a unit, but it feels good to know that you were able to do something good for a coworker.
Talk to someone
Sometimes, the stress of nursing is not task, medication, or equipment related. Nurses can experience compassion fatigue and burnout after seeing patients suffer and die day after day. Talking to another nurse, a friend, or a therapist can help you work through your own feelings of grief over the challenges that you and your patients face each day.
Take time off
Nurses are notorious for working long hours and picking up overtime shifts. Nearly half of all nurses report working at least a few hours of overtime each week. Many nurses choose to bunch their shifts together rather than taking PTO to go on trips or attend family gatherings, cashing out their time off instead of actually reducing their hours worked during the year.
While the money for overtime and PTO cashouts is tempting, it is important for healthcare providers to take breaks when they can and avoid working more overtime than they can handle.
Control what you can
Worrying about things outside your control often makes nursing stress exponentially worse. If you find yourself getting stressed at work, take a moment to focus on one small thing that you have complete control over. That might mean talking yourself through just one task at a time, and it may mean stopping to slow your breathing or quiet your racing thoughts.
For example, a family member may be angry about their loved one’s treatment plan. While you cannot control their anger, you can control the tone of your voice and the volume of your response. In another example, you may not be able to control that your patient needs CPR, but you can control the rate of your compressions.
Practice gratitude
Healthcare professionals are driven by a desire to help people and make the world a better, healthier, safer place. Some shifts may leave you feeling like your work is unappreciated or that you don’t make a difference. Practicing gratitude is one of the best ways to improve your outlook and manage nursing stress levels.
Sometime throughout each day, find 5-10 things to be thankful for. They can be as simple as being thankful for the coffee that will get you through the day, or as serious as thinking about a loved one and how much they mean to you.
