Mental Stress

Finally a day off! You don't know how excited I was for this day to come.

The last couple of weeks have been madness at work. It just seems that the longer you stay at one place, the more busier things get. It's not the same as before and it's not "easy" as before. At least that's how I feel.

They have trained me to be in charge of the unit, and let's just say it is tough. I knew it would be a lot of work for the in-charge, but this was just beyond ridiculous.

From the perspective of those who may think they know but they really don't, they assume the in-charge sits behind the desk all day, doing paperwork. So the paperwork should be easy to do in 8 hours, while the rest of the unit is busy running up and down the hallways, trying to attend to patients or give treatment etc. It makes it look like the in-charge is way easier to do versus being on the unit with 3 patients.

In reality? It's definitely not the case. Especially on day shifts!

It sounds easy trying to prepare the patient and staff assignment for the next day: go through the list, make sure everyone is on the list, assign staff to the patients, and done! Sounds easy right?

What people don't know is that in between those 8 hours, there is a phone call every minute or so, interrupting my chance to get my paperwork done. Maybe I'm still new to this, but it does get very annoying and distracting with phone calls ringing every 30 seconds. At least half the time, the phone calls are for me. So over half the time on my shift, I am on the phone with someone.

Then there are staff who come up to me to complain about assignment workload or what not, and then it takes time to figure out how to balance it out. Which takes time away from what I should be doing: tomorrow's assignment.

Transcribing doctor orders over the phone is also another common occurrence. The communication between doctors and I have to be accurate and carried out accordingly for the client.

Of course there are situations that can throw you off for the entire day: if someone doesn't show up for their treatment, if someone refuses to have their treatment etc. Their absence opens up a spot for other candidates. You don't have much time to think before you have to pull someone else to that empty spot to get the entire program flowing for the day. The goal is to not have any empty spots in the day time, in case something happens in the evening and they need a spot.

The worst is when you have a code happening on shift. As charge, you have to take charge and delegate to your staff on what to do. That's the scariest part. Having to do that, as well as trying to revive someone back to life. It's a lot of stress.

My pet peeve with this is having the evening charge come up and ask why so and so such thing wasn't done. I should've had time since I had extra staff on days. I just wish they were in my shoes to experience what I deal with on a daily basis.

I've learned a few things in my short time being at the desk:

1) People think I know everything so they come up and ask a billion questions. Of course if I don't know, I'd ask someone else. But that's the general attitude, especially from the newer staff.

2) There will always be that one person who looks at me as competition and will try to boss me around. In every place you go, there is always going to be that one bad apple.

3) Priority. A lot of things that happen on the unit is all based on prioritizing what's more important.

4) Flow. It's all about the flow of the unit. The goal is to keep it flowing and not stop.

5) Goals. There are a few but the big ones are that a) aiming to get as many treatments done in the day time versus evening, due to less staff being on evenings b) creating empty spots in evening or "float" staff in case an emergency occurs.

6) Reading and filtering over 500+ names is not easy. After a while, everyone's names start looking the same and it becomes impossible to find the names on paper.

7) In one day, our unit treated over 210 patients. No wonder it was hectic.

8) Last minute decisions. This goes with prioritizing, especially when there are no-shows. It does cause a lot of stress because I will always question my decision on whether it was the right call or not.

9) Communication. I find a lot of units lack this basic necessity. Every unit gets busy with their own thing, but to keep in touch with other units about transfers or discharges is probably the biggest problem. A lot of times I have to do my own assessment and investigation to find patients have been discharged home or vice versa (in hospital) without notification, and I would have to update our master list, as it will become critical to planning the entire schedule for the next day.

10) Respect. I respect my coworkers as much as they respect me. I know they have a busy day ahead of them and try to help/accommodate as much as I can.

11) Dislike. I know I won't be a fan to some people. Not everyone will like me based on how I operate a unit. I have to accept that.

12) Mental stress. This job takes a lot of mental stress from making critical decisions all day. It has drained me (I come home after a day of not taking any breaks or eating = I crash at home). It leaves no time to do anything except sleep and rest.

13) Learning. It is a huge learning experience to see how a program operates and work. No work day is the same thing. EVERYDAY is a learning experience.

14) A new found respect for the in-charge. I knew they were busy, but I didn't really know until I was behind the desk. Honestly, props to all those in-charges out there. It's tough work.