The character of a nurse is just as important as the knowledge she possesses. The impact of traumatic events on nurses is a far bigger problem then what people say about it. Some nurses become affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) very early in their careers even after being a nurse for a few years.
Post Traumatic Syndrome, a common term used mostly around military personnel but, PTSD has become a bigger problem in the last decade in the medical field. Especially with nurses, doctors, and/or physicians that work around and see some of the worst things possible in the medical field on a daily basis. PTSD is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or seeing a terrifying event. Compassion fatigue, aka. PTSD is the term …show more content…
The countless hours of practicing on your classmates, studying all night long for the test in the morning, and learning about the pros and cons of nursing, nurses aren’t emotionally or physically taught how to deal with PTSD/compassion fatigue. It’s a common topic that professors state in class, but that doesn’t mean everyone knows how to deal with compassion fatigue if they were to get it. You’re taught from day one, that you will see death, you will have some days that majority of your patients walk out of the hospital healthy and happy. But other days you will have a quarter of your patients alive and happy, while the others didn’t make it. Just because you hear it multiple times, doesn’t mean they’re ready to go out into the real world and deal with it in person. The anxiety most medical physicians deal with, are once they’re in the moment working on a patient they might get anxiety that they will do something wrong and forget what they are supposed to be doing. Leading to more wasted time that the patient could have had to help save them. Nurses are ‘hit with reality’ in the moment when they see a patient come through the doors, and the patient is in a life or death situation. An example to show the amount of stress certain kinds of nurses go through is the ICU (intensive care unit) in the hospital. Approximately 20% of ICU nurses had symptoms …show more content…
Working in the medical field means you need to know how to work well in a team. It’s never just you trying to heal a patient, it’s you and three to four other nurses, the doctor, the anesthesiologist, and the family. Symptoms of PTSD such as anger and irritability can interfere with working relationships with the other members of the healthcare team and can result in social isolation. (Hood, 2011.) Early treatment will result in better chance of getting over PTSD and still enjoying working at the medical field profession. First you must identify, understand, and develop a hierarchy of what triggers symptoms of compassion fatigue. Then review present methods for addressing difficulties in practice, develop caregiver plans for self-treatment, identify resources for addressing compassion fatigue and teach effective self-soothing
Post Traumatic Syndrome, a common term used mostly around military personnel but, PTSD has become a bigger problem in the last decade in the medical field. Especially with nurses, doctors, and/or physicians that work around and see some of the worst things possible in the medical field on a daily basis. PTSD is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or seeing a terrifying event. Compassion fatigue, aka. PTSD is the term …show more content…
The countless hours of practicing on your classmates, studying all night long for the test in the morning, and learning about the pros and cons of nursing, nurses aren’t emotionally or physically taught how to deal with PTSD/compassion fatigue. It’s a common topic that professors state in class, but that doesn’t mean everyone knows how to deal with compassion fatigue if they were to get it. You’re taught from day one, that you will see death, you will have some days that majority of your patients walk out of the hospital healthy and happy. But other days you will have a quarter of your patients alive and happy, while the others didn’t make it. Just because you hear it multiple times, doesn’t mean they’re ready to go out into the real world and deal with it in person. The anxiety most medical physicians deal with, are once they’re in the moment working on a patient they might get anxiety that they will do something wrong and forget what they are supposed to be doing. Leading to more wasted time that the patient could have had to help save them. Nurses are ‘hit with reality’ in the moment when they see a patient come through the doors, and the patient is in a life or death situation. An example to show the amount of stress certain kinds of nurses go through is the ICU (intensive care unit) in the hospital. Approximately 20% of ICU nurses had symptoms …show more content…
Working in the medical field means you need to know how to work well in a team. It’s never just you trying to heal a patient, it’s you and three to four other nurses, the doctor, the anesthesiologist, and the family. Symptoms of PTSD such as anger and irritability can interfere with working relationships with the other members of the healthcare team and can result in social isolation. (Hood, 2011.) Early treatment will result in better chance of getting over PTSD and still enjoying working at the medical field profession. First you must identify, understand, and develop a hierarchy of what triggers symptoms of compassion fatigue. Then review present methods for addressing difficulties in practice, develop caregiver plans for self-treatment, identify resources for addressing compassion fatigue and teach effective self-soothing