Recovering from burnout will take more effort and may require bigger life changes to break out of the rut. Let’s take a look at what you can do to recover.

• Take a break. And not just fifteen minutes. In order to recover, you’re going to need to slow down your life. Cut back on committments, perhaps take a week off work. If that’s not enough an extended leave might be in order. You’ll need to start reflecting on what issues are causing your burnout during this time. Once you are able to recognize the cause or causes, then you can begin to fix the problem.
• Turn to family and friends. Avoid isolating yourself. Your family and friends will likely have noticed that something is bothering you and will want to help. Share your feelings and problems with them. This can have immediate effect as you’ll be able to get some things off your chest and release that stress and tension.
• Reassess your direction. Understand that burnout is your body’s way of telling you that something in your life is out of balance. Reflect on your dreams and goals. Are you moving away from important dreams, goals or values?

Once you have taken some time to identify the causes of your burnout, you will be able to move forward and make positive changes in your life and career. Here’s a list of things you’ll want to consider in order to move past burnout:

• Discuss the issues that led to your burnout with your current manager or supervisor. One of the easiest ways to beat nursing burnout is to change your work environment. Clear the air on the things get to you or interfere with your ability to do your job.
• Change your job. If there is no possiblity of changing conditions in your current job you’ll want to consider taking a job in a different unit or looking at openings in other hospitals or facilities. This might be a good time to try travel nursing. Or perhaps you could go into teaching and prepare the nurses of tomorrow.
• Change your career. If you have completely lost your passion for nursing or your life goals have changed, this may be your best option. Take what you’ve learned from your situation to help you identify what kind of career could help you reignite your passion and help you meet your goals.

Here are some resources to help you recover from burnout:

Recovering From Burnout

Preventing Burnout – Signs, Symptoms, Causes, and Coping Strategies

The Deeper Well - Nursing retreats offered to help combat burnout.

AZ Oncology RN Job

• A great facility in Arizona is looking for a Chemo certified Oncology RN to help out in their outpatient unit.
• The ideal traveler will have strong experience with outpatient care.
• The traveler will be helping to cover vacations during the summer months.

More information about this travel nursing job.

Prevention of burnout by and large comes down recognizing the warning signs of burnout and bringing your life back into a healthy balance. Here are some tips that will help you get balance in your life and prevent burnout:

• Begin your day with a morning ritual – Get your day off to a good start by making time for breakfast, fifteen minutes of meditation, writing in your journal, gentle stretching, or reading something that inspires you. They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and in many ways that’s true. Don’t overlook the importance of breakfast to help you get off on the right foot every day.
• Pay attention to your eating habits, excercise, and sleeping habits – Start or rededicate yourself to a healthy diet and an excercise regimen. Get plenty of rest. Develop a bedtime routine that helps you relax and prepare to sleep. The combination of excercise, nutritious food, and rest will help recharge your daily battery and deal with most anything life can throw at you.
• Say “no” – This is very important. Beating burnout and managing stress involves using this two-letter word we all learned as a toddler. Learn to say “no” and set boundaries on requests for your time. This can be tough to do, but attempt to recognize situations where you can exert some control. By regaining control over situations in your life, you can start to say “no” easier.
• Start a new hobby – Take up a new activity or hobby that’s completely unrelated to your job. Think of the things you’ve always wanted to try but never did. Start tomorrow. A new hobby will kickstart your brain and nourish your creativity. Plus it will give you something to look forward to throughout the day or when you’re dealing with a stressful situation.

As you can see all of these tips involve taking control of your life in different ways. By regaining control over your life and its direction, you will feel better about yourself and better equipped to manage stress and beat burnout.

Here are a few good sites to read about beating burnout:

• Preventing Burnout – Signs, Symptoms, Causes, and Coping Strategies
• 77 Ways to Beat Burnout!

Next time I’ll take a look at how to recover from burnout.

The economy has placed a lot of stress on facilities as well as families. Facilities/hospitals have not been hiring as they watch their bottom lines closely and are utilizing their perm staff rather than travel nurses to fill extra shifts. The perm staff nurses have been eager to fill the extra shifts where in many cases their spouses may be dealing with a recent layoff from their job. Of course, you can see where this situation can lead: burnout.

Here are some signs to be aware of for yourself and your co-workers. If you can catch the warning signs that burnout present, you’ll be able to “right the ship” and get back to enjoying your work:

1. Headaches
2. Overwhelming exhaustion
3. Persistent sense of fatigue
4. Digestive problems (e.g., diarrhea, upset stomach)
5. Insomnia
6. Dizziness
7. Loss of appetite
8. Sudded weight loss or gain
9. Inability to concentrate
10. Sadness
11. Sense of isolation
12. Looking for excuses to not go to work

If you begin to notice these symtpoms in yourself or others, take them seriously. They could be warning signs of burnout.

NE Medical-Surgical RN Job

• Hospital located in Eastern NE is looking for a Med-Surg nurse to work in their 22 bed unit, with a 1:4 nurse patient ratio.
• Travel Nurse will work an evening shift 1pm-9:30pm, and work five days a week.
• Assignment is 8 weeks long and there will be no floating required.

More information about this travel nursing job.

So I’ve compiled a short-list of online resume writing services for nurses:

• Resume-For-Nurses.com
• CreatingPrints.com
• AspirationsResume.com
• e-resume.net
• Employment911.com
• Resume.info

If you decide to work with a resume writer, it will cost you. Prices vary somewhat so make sure you shop around and know what you feel comfortable paying.

TX Pediatrics RN Job

• Take your next travel nursing job in San Antonio, Texas!
• Nice mid sized facility looking for help in a Peds Intermediate Care Unit.
• Immediate starts.
• 12 hr shifts, 13 weeks.

More information about this travel nursing job.

I was recently reading this article ”How to converse with travel nurse recruiters” at TravelRNgab.com and it reminded me somewhat of an older post from Beth at PixelRN.com where she talked about nurses having a Mission Statement.

Almost every company has a Mission Statement that clearly communicates the company’s vision, their methods of conducting business, and the standards they measure themselves against. These statements are created mostly for the employees’ benefit. As they can use the mission to help guide them through business decisions and also provide motivation during the work day.

Gary’s post at TravelRNgab.com was a very good post with tips about how to talk with travel nursing recruiters, but to me the most important part of his post is how to be prepared to talk with a recruiter.

So how does this relate to a Mission Statement?

As a travel nurse or someone considering travelling, it is crucial to have a good idea of what you want from a travel nursing career. Your Mission Statement. Why do you want to travel? Where do you want to travel to? Do you like the challenge of being working in a large city hospital or do you prefer a small town atmosphere? Do you want to try to learn new skills?

Gary mentions having a list of priorities that he needs each recruiter to answer. For him, these priorities include understanding certain benefits a travel nursing company offers. This is a great idea that you should add as part of your Mission Statement.

All these things are important and will help you have a rewarding travel nursing experience. Armed with your Mission Statement you’ll be able to use it to help guide you in choosing travel nursing companies and assignments that match your career goals.

Here’s a great tool I discovered called Cost2Drive!

Simply enter the starting and ending points of your journey, as well as what type of car you’ll be driving. From that information the website will show you their estimation of the fuel cost of your trip. It also shows you a map with the stops in your trip where you’ll need to re-fuel your vehicle as well as what the price of gas is in that city. They also provide links to Mapquest, Yahoo Maps and Google Maps if you want to print out your driving directions.

The other nice thing it shows you is what your trip would cost if you decided to fly instead. I wish I could have used this tool a few years back when I was planning a family trip to Pennsylvania!

The one thing it doesn’t do is allow you to add extra stops on your journey. Say you planned to see your friend in Dallas, TX on your way to San Diego. With this site you would need to enter a trip from Minneapolis to Dallas and then another trip from Dallas to San Diego.

Give Cost2Drive a try the next time you have a road trip to plan!

Those of you who have travelled before will relate to their stories and for those of you who are considering travel nursing, you can gain some valuable insight from their experiences. Enjoy!

TX Pediatrics RN Job

• Nice mid sized facility looking for help in a Peds Intermediate Care Unit.
• Immediate starts. 12 hr shifts, 13 weeks.
• Take your next travel nursing job in San Antonio, Texas!

More information about this travel nursing job.

What sparked the turn around? A commitment to make their travelers feel like part of the family.

It’s good to hear a facility having success with travelers, but I hope that their revelation is more common among the nation’s health facilities than not. To me it just seems like common sense that if you make each of your employees (permanent or temporary) feel included as an important member of the staff, you have employees that are happier and more productive.

Without naming names, what has your general experience been? Are you made to feel like a valuable part of the staff or are you treated as an outsider?

This is the final article from Beth’s series of guest posts. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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I recently was fortunate enough to attend Blog World Expo 2008, the world’s largest blogging and new media conference. Part of my agenda was to meet with other health care bloggers like Kim from Emergiblog, and Dr. Val Jones from GetBetterHealth, to discuss the possibility of putting together a track dedicated to health care bloggers at next year’s conference. We also met with Rob Halper, who oversees the Johnson & Johnson Youtube channel, and Shane Pike, of Health Care Today. Together we brainstormed ways that we could make this happen. The result? A health care blogger track is a sure thing for next year (September 2009), and it’s going to be the first event of its kind that will bring all types of health care bloggers together. Potential topics include: HIPAA issues, using blogging to affect change in health care policy, and using your blog to leverage your expertise in your field. If you’re interested, Emergiblog has a poll up where you can see the list of topics and vote on the best ones.

One of our goals for the health care blogger’s track is to include all types of bloggers in the health care arena. That includes nurses, doctors, students, EMTs, technicians, medical librarians, social workers, pharmacists, researchers, and patients. One of the great things about health care blogging is that it brings together people from all specialties, and the result is one of the largest (and liveliest) ongoing multidisciplinary discussions on the state of health care. If you are still new to this idea of people blogging about health care, I would urge you to check out Grand Rounds. It’s a weekly roundup of some of the best blog posts with a medical theme.

Blog World Expo is a worthwhile and energizing experience for any type of blogger. If you have a blog, whether it be about nursing, or any thing else, I would urge you to go. Presentations included topics such as how to make money from your blog, building readership on your blog, and how to analyze your blog statistics. One of the best things about Blog World Expo was getting to meet other bloggers face to face. I had known of Kim and Dr. Val through their blogs for a couple of years now, but this was the first time I had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with them. It was a very energizing experience.

If you’d like to learn more about Blog World Expo and the health care blogger’s track, stop by Emergiblog and leave a comment with your email. Kim, the author of Emergiblog, is putting together an email list and will be updating us through out the year on this event. Hope to see you there!

I was inspired by the stories that our Recruiters sent me as they nominated their travelers to be considered as our company’s traveler of the year. The stories ranged from surviving a hurricane to delivering a eulogy at a patient’s funeral. But the one thing all these travelers had in common was their dedication and commitment to patient care.

It makes me realizes just how special our travel nurses are.

CA Medical-Surgical RN Job

• Great location on the Monterey Coast of CA
• Pebble Beach is close at hand for the golf enthusiasts
• San Francisco is a short drive up the coast for a weekend trip

More information about this travel nursing job.

Here is Part 3 of Beth’s series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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 Use Twitter to connect with other nurses.

Twitter is another social networking technology and it has often been referred to as “microblogging.” You make friends with people by following them, and if they are interested they will follow you back. When you update your Twitter page, it goes into a public timeline, and you can see what everyone else is “tweeting” about. People think of twitter as microblogging because you update your twitter page just as you would update a blog, but you are limited to 140 characters. Many people use it to share details about their day. Others use it to share links to promote their blogs or websites.

Lately Twitter has been jumping into the political arena. During the last presidential and vice-presidential debates, many participated on Twitter while watching the debate, which resulted in some very lively political discussion. Twitter also keeps track of trending topics so you can see what others are saying about each of the candidates.

There is an emerging community of nurses who use Twitter and you can find a list of them here. I can say first hand that the nurses who use Twitter are a welcoming and friendly community so I urge you to join in.

What is the benefit from using Twitter? For me it’s one more way of connecting to interesting people online. Nurses sometimes keep strange hours so it’s nice to be able to come home from night shift or evening shift and have people to chat with.

Use LinkedIn to maintain your resume and professional contacts.

LinkedIn is great site for maintaining your professional contacts. It also gives you a space to post your resume online, and it’s easy to keep it updated. One of my favorite things about LinkedIn is that you can automatically attach your resume as a PDF file when applying for jobs. You can also use LinkedIn to maintain professional relationships with people at other hospitals that you’ve worked for.

LinkedIn also provides a way to connect with former classmates. You can do a search of the school you attended, and then invite people to become your connections. (It’s funny how each social networking site has a different name for your contacts. Facebook has “friends,” Twitter has “followers,” and LinkedIn has “connections.”) They also feature professional groups you can join. Overall, it’s a great way to network with people in your chosen field.

A final word on social networking for nurses: Don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. Start out small if you wish. Leave a comment on a blog, or search Flickr for some subjects you might be interested. I’ve come to find that there are many interesting people online and the only way to find this out is to start participating.

Here is Part 2 of Beth’s series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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In this post, we’ll take a look at Facebook, Blogger, and WordPress.

Facebook is kind of a grab-bag for all of your social networking activity. You can create a profile, upload photos, write notes, and post links, and find people that you may know from high school, college, or previous places of employment (among other things.) If you are a traveling nurse and still aren’t using facebook, I suggest you sign up. It’s a very convenient and fun way of staying in touch with people.

There are also social sites dedicated strictly to nurses and people who are interested in nursing. Nursinglink is one of them. It contains many of the same features that you see on Facebook but centers around nursing.

If you are really ambitious about social networking you can start your own blog. What is a blog, exactly? The original word comes from web + log, and the first blogs were kind of like personal journals. They date back to earlier in this decade. These days a blog can be about anything you want it to be. It can be a personal diary, a way to update your friends and family on where you are traveling, or it can even be a collection of articles that you have written on a chosen subject. Travel nursing and blogging go hand in hand, and there is a great community of nurses who blog out there. Setting up a blog is really very easy to do, and free as well. You can start a free blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com. Each of these sites have templates that you can choose from and fairly easy to use interfaces.

There’s a large community of nurses who blog. You can find a partial list of them at OrientedX3.com. There’s also a biweekly roundup of some of the best nursing blog posts called Change of Shift. You can see the latest edition of Change of Shift at crzegrl.net.

In part three we’ll take a look at Twitter, a micro-blogging tool, and LinkedIn, a social site for professionals.

We’re delighted to have Beth join us for Part 1 of her series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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First of all, what is social networking, and why would a travel nurse be interested in it? A social networking service is basically any type of website that provides a way for people to connect and socialize online. More and more nurses these days are using social networking services to connect with friends, family, and other nurses. Travel nurses, especially, can benefit from these new technologies. They travel from job to job, making new friends along the way and trying to keep in touch with old friends, not to mention the people they leave behind at their home base.  Online communities, blogs, and photo-sharing sites can help them stay connected to everyone. But there are many different sites out there and figuring out which ones to use can sometimes be overwhelming. I’d like to share with you my top 5 favorite social networking sites, and explain how they can benefit the travel nurse.

Let’s start with one of my favorite social networking sites, Flickr

Flickr is a site that lets you store and share your photos. Two things make flickr especially useful, the ability to “tag” your photos and organize them according to subject, and the ability to search other people’s photos by subject matter. Also, you can create a profile and “friend” other flickr users. Flickr and traveling go hand in hand. Say you are about to accept a travel assignment in Baltimore, MD. You’ve never been there before and you are anxious to get a feel for the city. Perhaps you’d like to figure out what neighborhood to live in, or what sites you’d like to see. Flickr allows you to search all of the photos tagged, Baltimore. From here you might search other neighborhoods in Baltimore, like Canton or Charles Village. I recommend searching by “tags only” and by “most interesting” as opposed to “most recent.” That way, Flickr will pick out the most relevant photos for you. You can also search by clicking on “Explore” and choosing “Places.” Then, type in the place you would like to see and Flickr will show you photos that have been geo-tagged with that place, and also show you some photo groups that revolve around that location

Flickr is also a social site, and so you can create a list of contacts. Flickr, like many other social networking sites, allows you to find people you already know by searching your email contacts on gmail, hotmail, and yahoo mail. When you become friends with someone, it will be easier to view one another’s photos.

Finally, when you start uploading your own photos, you can also “tag” them. Tagging simply refers to designating a keyword to your photo, making it easier to search for at a later date. You can basically choose any tags you want, and organize your photos according to subject matter, location, or when you took them.

In part two I’ll take a look at Facebook, and also talk about starting your own blog.

 

The sixth episode of Hopkins aired last Thursday on ABC. I missed the 5th episode due to a much needed family vacation, but I was happy to see this recent episode which included a kidney swap between three couples.

The show also followed the trials of a first-year surgery resident trying to find his way. Unfortunately he accidently punctured a patient’s lung during a procedure. The patient was understandably upset but also forgiving.

A pediatric resident dealt with the stressful ups and downs of working in the NICU. In fact the show follows the sad story of a premature baby.

The main highlight in this episode however was the story about three couples donating a kidney so their significant other could receive a kidney. Transplants have had a prominent role in Hopkins. With the unbeleivable project and time management needed for a succesful transplant, it’s been easy to see why.

The final episode of the series will air this Thursday night.

 

Last night’s episode of ‘Hopkins’ featured another heart transplant. This time it was a toddler in need of a healthy heart. This scenario is every parent’s worst nightmare. Watching your child face what comes down to a life and death situation. As a parent of 2 young boys this episode really tugged on my emotions as well as my wife’s.

It was amazing watching the pediatric doctors objectively discussing the options for this little boy. They must consider all avenues and present them to the parents. Not only that but then they must follow through with parents’ choice of action, which in this case was placing the boy on a transplant list and hoping that a heart would become available.

Their prayers were answered and a heart did become available. This was another difficult segment to watch as the little boy underwent heart transplant surgery. It is such a miracle that this is even possible and that it went so well for this boy.

It does make me think how much pressure there must be on the doctors and nurses involved in these types of surgeries and how they must detach themselves from the emotional side of the procedures. In fact, I’m sure it’s a necessity to detach from the circumstances surrounding each patient in order to do what is required.

All in all, this was another compelling episode that stayed true to the formula of the first couple episodes.