Working Overtime as a Nurse:
The demanding nature of nursing, coupled with long and often grueling hours, can become a breeding ground for stress. When unharnessed, this stress can steal the joy and passion from your profession and replace it with exhaustion and burnout. An increasing amount of labor and delivery nurses, and nurses across diverse specialties, are now working overtime. There are pros and cons of working overtime for personal health and patient safety. This article aims to shed light on the stress caused by working overtime as a nurse and provide practical ways to handle it.
Stress in Nursing:
Nursing is one of the most rewarding and trusted professions, but it is also one of the most stressful. The stress nurses experience can emanate from various sources: high patient loads, understaffed nursing units, demanding work schedules, long work hours, lack of breaks, chronic dehydration, and unending administrative work. When you add over time to this, stress levels can skyrocket, potentially impacting not just your professional life but your personal life as well.
The Impact of Overtime:
Working overtime means less time for self-care and less time with friends and family. This can not only impact your mental and physical health but can also feed into a cycle of chronic stress and fatigue. Over time, this excessive stress can contribute to burnout, reduced job satisfaction, decreased productivity, exhaustion, depression, and using more sick leave. It can even increase the risk of making errors at work. It has even been shown that working overtime increases a nurse's risk of causing medication errors. Specifically, every hour of overtime increases the risk of a medication error by 2% (Olds DM. and Clarke SP. 2010).
Ways to Handle the Pressure:
Though the challenges are many, there are ways to survive and indeed thrive even in the midst of high-pressure, overtime scenarios.
Self-care: It may seem impossible to squeeze in any self-care with a hectic schedule, but small and consistent efforts can have a big impact. Taking time every day after or before a shift to go on a walk, taking small breaks during shifts or even just looping around the nurse's station, regular exercise, balanced nutrition or just staying away from fried processed foods, and ensuring adequate sleep can go a long way in stress management. I try not to oversleep for my shifts because then I realize I have no time for myself. I make sure that I do something every day before my shift so it doesn't feel like work is my life. Going outside and seeing some sunshine, especially for nightshifters is very important.
Stay Organized: Utilize tools like to-do lists, daily planners, priority marking, and time management strategies. This will help streamline your tasks and organize your life, thus reducing some work-related stress. I always bring my planner to work and make sure I know what I am doing every week. I always plan something fun to do every week so I have something to look forward to.
Emotional Support: Don’t hesitate to seek help from your colleagues, family, friends, or a professional counselor. Some hospitals have counselors for their employees or you can use an app like better health. Find a coworker you can also unload your work stress too because chances are they might want to do the same. If you working the night shift, go out to breakfast with your night team to distress from the night.
Learn Something New: Learning new skills or pursuing further studies can imbibe a sense of achievement and help manage stress. This can include things such as a new sport hobby, fishing, canning and cooking, art, or DIY projects.
Take Care of You
Overtime is an exhausting but often unavoidable part of the nursing profession. However, stress management is not just about managing our response to the stressors at work, but also taking care of our whole beings. Understanding the nature of stress and leveraging coping strategies can lighten the workload, and make your job seem enjoyable. Remember that working overtime is a great way to make money, but a great way to stress yourself out so know how to care for yourself!
References:
Olds DM, Clarke SP. The effect of work hours on adverse events and errors in health care. J Safety Res. 2010 Apr;41(2):153-62. doi: 10.1016/j.jsr.2010.02.002. Epub 2010 Mar 12. PMID: 20497801; PMCID: PMC2910393.
