So, today I got asked a simple question and I just didn’t know the answer. I was asked by a patient “Nurse, how do you stay so devilishly handsome?”….what? Don’t you believe me?…..fair enough. I was actually asked “How do you last through a 14 hour shift?” And to be honest my initial reaction was “Well, that’s like asking Superman how he flies. He would probably say I don’t know and then explode you with laser vision.”

Luckily for this particular patient I don’t have laser vision…..yet. But it got me thinking, there are so many different nurses each with their own way of dealing with a long and stressful shift (as if there is any other kind). So I thought I would take you through the different coping mechanisms I have seen and hopefully hear about some of your own.

So the first method is the driving force behind any nursing staff. I am pretty sure some nurses have this instead of blood, sweat tears…..cerebro-spinal fluid and any other bodily fluid you care to mention, and it is of course…coffee. Now I have seen nurses young and old work through 20 cups of coffee. While coffee is very good for that “quick pick-me-up”, heavy use in a short period can leave you looking like a Nick Nolte mug shot (look it up) with a heart that is doing the Macarena . I recall one particular colleague who had 12 cups of coffee in 4 hours and rushed past me saying she was having trouble keeping up with her heart beat.

Number two on the list is a common sight in some areas and that is the crying nurse. I have never understood this one, perhaps because a highly curmudgeonly individual who has oodles of cynicism where his feelings should be but I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on that one. But I have seen numerous nurses (male and female) go into the staff room (and in one case a particularly large and convenient cardboard box….no really!) only to come out with a wet face, puffy eyes and a strangely satisfied facial expression. But if that helps you get through the shift without researching which drugs are undetectable in autopsy then keep it up!

The third coping mechanism is a particularly irritating one and that is complaining. The nurse who complains about their day or their workload is a nurse who will will swiftly meet my sharp tongue. I have never seen the point. I have worked with people who say “My day has been so hard” or “It’s been such a bad shift” and I think “You think you’ve had it bad, I have had the same hellish shift AND I have had to listen to your whining, now go away before I slap you with a busted catheter bag.” Most annoyingly they never seem to acknowledge that other people have had a bad day as well. I often have to tell people that moody self obsession is only attractive in mysterious brooding teenage boys who ride motorcycles. Please don’t be that nurse or if you really feel you have to complain, do it the proper way, start an online blog and passive-aggressively whine about it in one of your posts.

Finally, I will mention hobbies. Now this is, for me, the best way to kill that oh so familiar stress. How effective this is will depend entirely on your hobbies. So if your hobby is, for example a blood sport, that’s going to work pretty well but all sorts of things will work. Like one ward sister I met who used to use needle point to stitch a different swear word into a blanket every bad day. Or the male nurse who enjoyed running. He started at the hospital after his shift and pretended he was running from a fire he just started! But to any nursing students or prospective students, get a hobby and get one now!

So over to you, what’s your weird and wonderful ways of dealing with that overly demanding patient or the shift that just won’t end!

-OptimursePrime