07// Thriving in Challenging Work Environments: Strategies for Nurses and Professionals

In my daily conversations with nurses, I find more and more nurses saying that "I need to change things". There are nurses who are at the top of their pay scales and they need to decide what they should do next. Many others are still in the middle of it or are just starting out and say the same thing. What's the common denominator among those who are just starting out or in the middle? In all of these cases, perspective is the common denominator. It is our nature as ambitious nurses to always think about the next thing. A move may seem like the next step for us at times. A move, however, may not always be the best solution. The best answer sometimes is to stay in your current position and change the situation. During this episode, I discuss what you can do if you feel you are in a difficult situation but you enjoy your work. Let's navigate through the feelings of wanting to change your situation and see if we can find a solution for you to have more peace at work.

Here are a few things we will tackle in this episode: 

1. Best steps to change your perspective
2. How the lack of balance between work and life can be a contributing factor in your bad situation
3. The importance of examining work relationships
4. How more work for you may be the better answer
5. The importance of stepping up and contributing your voice in the workplace
6. What you should make the ultimate priority when you are uneasy and not at peace at work 

Transcript

0:04

Welcome to the ambitious nurse podcast, where I provide tips, tools, and resources for the experienced nurse to put in your career bag to help you be a better person, a better leader, a better professional, and most of all, a better nurse. I'm your host, Bonnie Meadows, a career coach, and a clinical nurse specialist with over 18 years of experience in healthcare and nursing. It's my passion to help experienced nurses develop their careers to impact healthcare and their communities. Hello everyone and welcome back. This episode is for those who love what they do. They've discovered it's not that they don't like what they do. Or you may or may not necessarily know whether you like what you do., This may be an episode where you're still trying to figure out what is the issue? This is for those who love what they do or like what they do, where they work, but the work circumstances have made them uneasy and it makes them feel like it's a bad situation, a situation that they don't necessarily want to be in. There are some things that have occurred and they have come to the conclusion that they might need to make some other decisions, but they are stuck in what those decisions are. And sometimes it may not necessarily be that you have to make a move. It may be more so that you just have to change your perception or change up some things that you need to do versus actually leaving the job. So how do you make that decision on, is it time for me to leave the job or is it time for things to change up just a little bit? I said in a previous episode that there was data out there from a survey that said that there was a large percentage of nurses who actually liked the work that they did. They just felt like there was some things within the organization that needed to change, but sometimes it's you that needs to change. Sometimes it's you. So I am here to talk about how every person can try to make the best out of a bad situation with just some good nurse motivation. Sometimes you need just a little good motivation or, a refreshing about the career, and a new perspective. So in this episode, you'll learn how to make the best out of what seems like a bad or uncomfortable situation. The other day I was speaking with a client and she was talking about she wanted to, I would say in air quotes, do something different. And that's usually what most of my clients come to me and say, I just wanna do something different, or I need to do something different. That's the key for me to start in my questioning. And I have a line of questions that I usually ask my clients initially to get to the root of their angst, whether it's more so they have reached a plateau and they need to grow somewhere else. Whether it's more so the work environment, but they wanna stay in what they're doing or whether it's more so they have different expectations of what should be expected, and we need to talk through what do those expectations, what should they really look like? I find that a lot of nurses, they get anxious and an uneasy feeling about where they are in their work situation. Especially in this day and time when there can be shortages and you may be working short staffed or you're working with travelers or you come in and you're not working with your people. I tell people all the time, I don't come to work to work. The majority of the work that I do as a clinical nurse specialist, although much of it is clinical, 40% of it is clinical, 60% of it is admin that I can do at home. 40% of it is me going in and working elbow to elbow with the nurses and doing some problem solving about their work environment and then taking that and either developing a process improvement strategy around it and helping them to develop, because I mainly provide the tools and then some advanced level thinking. But a lot of times I'm relying on them and, encouraging them to think through their own processes to develop a workflow that is best for them and that meets the needs of the patient. So I have foundational questions, as I said, that I usually go through when I'm trying to help nurses figure out what's their next step? What is it that they feel this unease about that they need to do something different? I'm a master at having these uneasy feelings and then trying to figure out what is this? Is it that I'm just anxious and biting at the bit to do something new? Am I bored? What is it about this situation that makes me uneasy? Or it just feels like I don't feel like going to work today. Like, what is it? So first I ask, well, what do you ultimately want to do? Some people know, and some people, they have an idea when they come into nursing, and then when they get in, they kind of see the landscape, and then you get a taste of different things. When you're in nursing school, you only see and only hear about a few things, and those things, they perk your ear up but a lot of times it's things that most people already do or already know about. For example, the two routes that you mainly hear about is either going to be a nurse practitioner or going to be a nurse manager. And I will say coming out of nursing school, I thought that I was going to nurse practitioner school. I kind of thought that that was gonna be my route. Then I actually changed and decided, I'll just try to go to med school. And then I figured out, I like nursing better. I think I've grown here. I wanna make the best of my nursing career. Some people know, some people don't. Then my next question is, well, do you wanna stay clinical? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not quite ready to leave. Most people are not quite ready to leave the bedside, but they're starting to think, and I don't think that that is a bad thing. I don't think that it's a bad thing for you to not be quite ready to leave the bedside. In fact, I encourage people, if you are starting to have an inkling about the fact that you want to possibly do something different a few years down the line, don't wait until you're ready, ready. If your next step is, I might want to go back and get my degree, then you need to start looking into that right now. Not two years down the line. Oh, I'll be ready. No, you need to prepare right now, or you may want to go ahead and apply and take a class or two, at least make a decision on what is my master's program going to be? And then even if you're not ready to move on, especially if you're an ambitious nurse, you've always got to actively be working towards something and sometimes that actively working towards something is just going back and getting a master's degree. So my next question is usually, do you wanna return for another degree? This particular client, they did plan to pursue another degree, but I could tell she just wasn't quite ready for that just yet. There was something that was missing. As we kept talking, I brought up the fact that I didn't think that she was ready for a change. And she agreed. She loved her work and the people that she worked We started going down the list of, what's holding you back? What do you like, what do you not like? And that's where this subject and question came in. What do you do when you want something different or the work environment is not what you want it to be, but you want to stay? Because she was like I love the people I work with. When I come in, when I see my crew, I'm like, oh yes, this is gonna be a good night. And that's when I feel like, yeah, I still love what I do. So here are some things that I encouraged her to do. And then I will tell you at the end when I followed up with her, what her response was. First focus on the positives. Your situation is all about your perspective, and that can be hard to do. You hear and see a lot of things out there about, creating a gratitude journal and things like that. I think that that's great. I think it's pretty much saying the same thing that I'm saying of at least focus on and start to think about what are those things that I like about what I do. Because even as you're thinking about those things, they help you to make decisions later on in your career when you're trying to make a decision about what is it that I really love about nursing? These questions help to drive your professional brand to pretty much say, okay, I've learned these things along the way. This is what I feel like I like, and then from here I will grow my career from that place. I've talked about professional brands before and how it is important to develop a professional brand, but sometimes it's not easy to do when you've not had a lot of experience beyond the bedside or you've not encountered enough, areas beyond the bedside. Especially if you still don't have a passion for a thing. The field is still wide open for you. So think about the pros of working where you are. What makes a great day at work for you? What made a great day at work for her, no matter what the circumstance was, was the people that she worked with. She still loved the people that she worked with. She loved what she was doing as a nurse. So I asked her to make sure she figures out a way to focus on those positives about the situation. Secondly, find a balance between work and life. I find this very often when I talk to my clients and they're like, I'm stressed out. I've got so much going on. I'm over it. I really like what I do, but I'm tired. I don't know if I need to find something different, but I just need to do something different. I'm like, just take some time off. And more than likely, they've not taken time off. Some of them, just need a break. If you don't like your current situation, it's up to you to take action. Take action, take a break, and that's easy for me to say when people are calling you and asking you to come into work. But coming from someone who worked at the bedside for seven, eight years, and yes, did work in an environment where you were getting calls every day about coming into work. Yes, that is pressure. But once you know what your boundaries are, then you work within that pressure. For example, I knew I just wasn't one to work a whole lot of overtime. I just wasn't. You can move me around a day. All of these other things. And not saying that I never worked overtime, because I did, but I was very selective about when I worked overtime because I knew it was gonna lead to burnout for me. Money is not necessarily my core motivator. My time is my core motivator. Freedom in my time, a I always was very adamant about taking a vacation and knowing when I needed to pull back from activities to get some time and space away from work to really reflect. Take my mind off of work so that I can be refreshed in coming back into work and have a better attitude about work. I always knew when I was hitting my breaking point, when I would start to get snippy with other people and start to not like going to work. If I started taking more days than usual, not necessarily call outs. But just taking more days than usual. I knew it was time for me to take a long stretch off just to kind of refill, revise, renew, and help to refresh my perspective of work. Plus, once you take a certain amount of days off, after a while you're like, I gotta go back to work so I can make more money so I can go back on vacation again. And then, the other thing that you can do when you're trying to find that balance between work and life, and you're one of those people who has to always have their hands going in things, I'm one of those people. Find another hobby. Is your work in nursing all you do? Even if your hobby is getting involved in your professional organizations, what are you doing outside of work that takes your mind away from the work? What are you doing? Think about that and that will help you to find that balance between work and life, and that allows you to take action because it's not all on the people at work. You have to start with you and you being in control of what you can control and what you can control is taking a vacation, pulling back from activities at work that, you may need to pull back from to give yourself some space. You can control finding a new hobby to shift your mindset and shift your mind into something else. Number three is mend any broken or stressful relationships with management or coworkers, if possible. If you've not talked with your boss about how to improve your work situation, then don't leave. If you love the work and you've tried to talk to your boss about the situation, and there are ways to talk about it without talking about but it is important for us to communicate when we don't wanna be somewhere, or when we are in a position to where we just feel like we need to do something different. They can help you walk through that. If it's a trustworthy boss, if it's not necessarily a trustworthy boss, then there are some ways to finesse around having that conversation. And I do as a coach, help people to walk through that conversation to not make it about them, but make it about the situation, and then from there you can kind of get your answer. If you're later in your career and you've had a boss or two or whatever the case may be, you kind of know who you're working with. You know, if this is someone who you can be upfront with versus someone you can't be upfront with, and they are just like a brick wall and whatever you tell them, it's just gonna go in one ear and out the other. That's when you really have to make a decision for yourself, but I always told nurses, my colleagues and my clients, that it is very important for you to say what you need to say regardless of whether you feel like they're gonna take action or not. Whatever that thing is it's a stressor for you, give them an opportunity to fix it. And if they don't, then you know, it's time for you to move on. Sometimes we don't have good relationships or just don't like our bosses or our coworkers. Again, that goes back to I come to work to socialize. I spend most of my time at work, not at home. If it's not a peaceful situation, and you don't feel like it's a trustworthy situation to where if you have that conversation, it's going to go somewhere, I give you permission to go ahead and start looking for something else. Just in case you needed it. Some of us just need permission. I'm one of those people sometimes. Just give me permission to be able to make this decision and I'm doing it. And then this might be a little strange, but ask for more responsibility. This kind of goes back to finding a new hobby or a new thing. Maybe you don't have enough to do. Maybe you're a little bored. Maybe you need a project to work on. You can't complain about your environment if you're not putting in the work to make your environment better. The statistics that I talked about earlier is that 40% of nurses practicing clinically require changes to be made to stay at their current job. They're the ones who are least satisfied, but you can't go to work and then come back home. If you're not satisfied, but you love the work that you do, then make the effort to take on a little bit more responsibility because it's up to you to have ownership over your patient population and the work that you are assigned to do in this space and time. And I'm not talking about your patient one and two or patient one through five, or patient one through nine. Your assignment and purpose for this moment is the job that you have, so it is up to you to make the best out of a bad situation. If there's help that is needed, if there's a process that needs to be improved, it goes over much better when it's coming from you as a peer than when it's coming from the manager. I learned very early on, whatever decisions I can make for my manager, for my own workflow, I'm gonna make them, because once they make'em it is not gonna be good. It's not. So whenever they're asking you for your input and asking you to work on a project, jump at it unless you already got five other projects. Now don't do that. But if you just got one or two help out, it's only going to help your work environment. You're gonna have people who are gonna complain and not gonna wanna do, but that also gives you a taste of leadership when you're working on projects because these people don't report to you, so there has to be a level of respect as to whether they're going to do what you've asked them to do. So it helps you to grow also in the meantime when you volunteer to work on projects and take on a little bit more responsibility that will, one, be of benefit to the patients, but also of benefit to your work environment. My next point goes along with what I said earlier, and it's making your voice heard backed with evidence and solutions for the company or for the patients. Pain points. Like if the patients are complaining about things or the hospital wants something that is specific to whatever is in your area and they are giving you the opportunity to create whatever it is that needs to be created, that is evidence-based and you know, something that is evidence-based, you've read it in a journal, whatever the case may be. Help provide that solution and work with a team to get it done. So this goes back to asking for more responsibilities, but it allows you to take control to come up with solutions for the work issues that you encounter that probably make work in general, a bad situation or an uneasy situation for you. Here's a news flash. The hospital is a business and you will hear me remind you of that several times over and over again. Those who know how to do it, operate as a business. Nurses know how to do it along with those who have gotten a Master's in healthcare administration or an MBA with a focus in healthcare. But your voice needs to be at the table. You want them to operate as a business, and then you operate in your specialty of doing what you need to do to take care of the patients. But the two need to marry one another. Good processes, good structure will help not only in your workflow, but in the sustainability of the hospital and them operating in the best way that they need to operate. Lastly, I'm gonna say be sure to practice self-care and make it a priority. So I'm going back to take time off as you need it. Take time to reflect. Take a break. I've seen in the past couple of years, some nurses have taken a break and gone to a position that is not as fast paced as their current environment, and then got into the slower pace and decided they wanted to come back to the hospital. So sometimes it's better to just take some time off instead of leaving completely and then going to another job and then coming back six months later. But have a plan of what your next move is going to be. Think about that. So if you wanna change in your work environment, but you're not ready to leave yet, work on your perspective. Take some time off, pause, do some reflection, evaluate if you're doing enough to be a part of the solution versus being a part of the problem. By taking on new projects that would help enhance the environment. Work to reduce stressful situations with your coworkers and your boss, and above all else, take care of yourself and fill your cup. This will give you the opportunity to come to work with a better mindset. Don't make a permanent decision in a temporary situation. Some of you really need to take a break or you need something outside of work to draw your attention away from work. And if you feel like you left your old job too early, it's never too late to go back. Grace is available for you. That's one thing I've been saying a whole lot. Grace is available to you. So to follow up on the client that I had this conversation with, we had a follow up conversation, about a month later and she said I really thought about our conversation and what you said, and I decided I do like what I do, I don't need to do anything different but she said what I did decide to do, because she had maxed out on her PTO. So once you maxed out on your PTO, they just it out to you. And that's what they did. And so that's when she decided it was time for her to take some time off. So she took some time off and then she decided to go part-time. That way if she wanted to work extra, she could just work extra whenever she wanted. She was like, now I come into work, I'm refreshed. I'm glad to be here. I don't have things weighing on me like I used to. I'm a much better person, so that's my first two points, and my last point was really about you taking care of you, knowing that the work will always be there, but you have to take care of yourself first so there's optimal care for the patient. We came into this to help patients, to help people get better, but you can't do that if you are worn out. If you're coming in with a terrible attitude, you just can't. Don't try to work your way through it, fake your way through it, whatever the case may be, figure it out so that we can be all better at the bedside. Or maybe it's just time for you to move on. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Let me know your thoughts. Let me know what ways do you have to, kind of combat this feeling that you have or let me know how this resonated with you. You can find me on LinkedIn with my full name Bonnie Meadows. You'll find me as a cardiovascular clinical nurse specialist. So just let me know your thoughts and I hope to hear from you.