Nursing Student Coach

Contagious Energy in Healthcare: How to Shed Negativity to Provide Compassionate Nursing

Lauren Chapnick Season 2 Episode 5

In this season of Nursing Student Coach, I, Lauren Chapnick, am ready to share heartfelt stories and insights from my journey as a registered nurse. Through my transition into this second career and immersion into the emergency department's intensity, I've gleaned lessons that are pivotal not just for those entering the nursing field, but for any professional striving to provide compassionate care.

This episode is a heartfelt call to action, urging us to recognize the profound impact we can make in our patients' lives. I recount the story of one individual who only needed a nurse's acknowledgment to feel seen during a terrifying ordeal. Furthermore, I reflect on a personal experience with a young patient that challenged my emotional resilience, underscoring the imperative to manage our own emotions to offer the best care possible. Join me for a candid discussion on the importance of our energy and presence, and how we, as healthcare professionals, can ensure every patient receives the compassion and attention they rightly deserve.

Speaker 1:

Hello everybody and welcome to season two of Nursing Student Coach. My name is Lauren Chapnick. I'm your host. I'm a registered nurse. Nursing is a second career for me and I found ways to thrive in nursing school and now as a new nurse in an emergency department. I want to take this season to share my stories, experiences and lessons with you so that you can become the best nursing student and the best nurse, and really just the best version of yourself that you could possibly be. All episodes are 10 minutes or less, so you can grab it and go. And a couple more things before we get into today's show. If you could kindly take a couple seconds to pull out your phone, give us a quick five star rating and review. It helps so much more than you even know to put the show in front of more future nurses, because it is my personal mission to help put more great nurses into the world and I need your help to do that. So thank you so much. And lastly, the views and opinions expressed on Nursing Student Coach are those of Lauren Chapnick and hers alone. They are not intended as medical advice and should not replace your institution's policies or procedures. So guys on to today's podcast. It's the Nursing Student Coach giving you the strategies you need the most.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, today I want to talk about something. I heard a line on a podcast the other day and it just struck me so hard because I agree with it so much, and it was a person talking about an experience they had had in the hospital. They had something very serious. They had had a hemorrhagic stroke and they felt like the medical team was talking about them, talking over them, and nobody was talking to them and she was scared out of her mind. Here's something that she said that really struck me. She said as a healthcare professional, you are responsible for the energy that you bring into the room. She felt that everybody, or the majority of the healthcare team in the room, were just frantic, panicked, stressed out and just talking over her. And she had one nurse who just looked at her and said, cathy, or whatever her name was Hi, cathy, I'm so, and so I know you're scared right now, but it's okay, we're going to take care of you. And just that somebody speaking to her was everything.

Speaker 1:

And I just started thinking about all the times that I may have been holding on to something personal or an interaction with another patient or something that had made me upset and I brought it into another patient's room. That patient, who you are going in to see, deserves your full attention, and I know that's easier said than done. We're all human beings. Whatever is going on personally, whatever happened in the room before, we have to find ways to let it go so that we can give as much as we can and we don't carry that energy into that room with us, and to look at those patients and treat them as human beings that are scared and are going through something they've never been through before. So I've said this before that energy is contagious. So we've all been around highly toxic people that have nothing to give you but negative energy, and we've all been around those people who are just radiating positive energy and you just want to be around them. And I'm not saying that you have to be positive all the time, but I'm saying you don't need to bring it into a patient's room and you don't need to poison the other people who are around you with your own baggage. And that's what I am working through, because I will say, working in an emergency room, there are days where stuff gets heavy and it really gets to you. I'll give you an example.

Speaker 1:

I had a patient who was a 26 year old woman. We'll call her Emily. Emily came in. She had a two year old daughter with her and I believe her mother was with her and she was there for dizziness. She was there for dizziness and lightheadedness. That was her chief complaint and after going into the room and speaking to her it came to light that she had been hit in the head by her boyfriend, who was also the father of this child, and she had been punched in the head by this man. She did not call the police, she said we were fighting and he's never done that before and it was an emotional case for me. We did a CAT scan of her head and everything was fine. She was cleared, but we did involve social work to come down and do a consult to see if she was safe at home. I guess the redeeming thing was that she didn't live with this boyfriend. It struck me so hard because this beautiful, innocent two year old girl that was there, not only did I feel that she was in danger with this person, but she was witnessing this with her mom and she was seeing this example of how her mother was being treated.

Speaker 1:

As a nurse, it's not my place to judge. I'm there to treat her and to offer her resources and that's what we did. We offered her resources, we told her about safe places that she could go and that's what social work could offer her. And that's all we could do if she declined it. That's all we could do. And when I tell you, this stuck with me, it just really.

Speaker 1:

I walked into a room and just got hit with this and then five seconds later I have to go into a different room and that person, whatever they're going through, I can't take that in with me. That's not their pain and it's really not even my pain. That's the patient's pain and it's not. It's up to me to find a way to compartmentalize it and to put it in its own box, put it away somewhere. I'm not saying don't deal with it, but I cannot bring that in to everything else. I can't bring it home. I can't bring it into that next patient's room, because that next patient is going through their own crisis and that's hard. And I'm not saying every single room is that emotionally taxing, but those things they're hard.

Speaker 1:

And not only is it my responsibility as the nurse to not bring it into the next room and to not suffocate my coworkers with my feelings and to fall into a heap and cry. It is also my responsibility to find my own ways to deal with it and to process it somehow on my own. Now I do things like I journal, I do yoga, I meditate and I do my very best to let it go, but sometimes it just comes to you. You think of these patients and you wonder where? Where are they? Is she okay? Is her daughter okay? And it's hard, but that's the job and I hope that maybe we had some sort of impact with the resource that we offered her and I hope that she's okay. But it's not my job to solve everything and it is my job to provide the best empathetic, compassionate, high quality care that I can, to not bring it in to the next room. Thanks for listening, everybody. I hope you have an amazing day. Bye-bye.

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