Nursing is one of the tedious professions within the healthcare sector. Your job extends from caring for patients to brushing up on your skills. The constant juggling of responsibilities can make you struggle as a professional healthcare worker. Following the pandemic, a new wave of challenges has entered the scene. Issues like worker shortage, longer shifts, and lack of protection as you work with infectious diseases can take a toll.
Therefore, the only way forward is to highlight these circumstances, which will help you manage yourself better. Here are some of the challenges working in the healthcare sector can bring:
1. Struggle To Provide Highly Specific Care to Patients
Every patient is unique and requires care in a certain way. As a nurse, it is your job to ensure you can match the patients’ expectations. However, you may get limited by your current qualifications. The nursing sector is specific. You need to have the knowledge, skills, and degree to optimize patient care. If you work without paying any heed towards upgrading, you will struggle to look after patients.
While going back to nursing school, full-time may not be an option. You can enroll yourself into online Post Masters DNP programs and fast-track your way to success. Getting a highly professional degree like DNP will prepare you for better caring techniques. But, this option is only possible if you are willing to go the extra mile for your career.
2. Dealing With a Nursing Shortage
Shortage of workers in any field means more work. In the nursing sector, when you don’t have enough team members, a large chunk of cases become your responsibility. Nursing shortage happens for many reasons, including lack of hiring, high turnover of population, and lack of resources to train the new staff. It is not easy to work through many cases alone since this also leads to patients waiting longer for their turn.
So, not only do you risk burnout, but the hospital’s reputation may also be in jeopardy. At the end of your shift, you may feel exhausted, angry, and irritable, which can easily seep into your personal life, pushing loved ones away from you. In some instances, you will also have to stay back working long shifts with minimal breaks in between. This can severely impact your sleep schedule.
3. Rapid Introduction of Technological advancements
The nursing sector has become incredibly tech-savvy. While concepts like big data, AI, and machine learning are pioneers in reshaping the healthcare sector, you still need to learn how to use them. As a nurse, you will need to keep up with these advancements to provide the best care to patients.
Advanced technological concepts require time and dedication before you start understanding the purpose of each tool. The first few attempts to create a database may be unsuccessful, discouraging you from trying again.
4. The Strain of Physical Labor
Your job is not limited to patient interaction and taking notes. You will also need to out in some manual labor. You will need to lift heavy equipment with your team, such as moving machines, lifting patients, and sometimes carrying boxes of samples and machines. When working with heavy objects, you need to heed caution since the frequent bending and picking up new items to pack will cause back pain.
The gaps in your spine will cause you discomfort and prevent you from carrying out a routine. Eventually, you may need to quit work early because of your physical well-being.
5. Exposure to Infections and Diseases
Even though the nursing sector handled the pandemic of 2019 with cutting-edge expertise, it also put their lives on the line. As a nurse, you are always in danger of getting infected or exposed to strong chemical solutions. The lack of protective gear from the hospital’s end also increases getting sick at work. Without a suitable respirator, you may contract pneumonia and the cold flu. When handling apparatus like injection syringes and scalpels, you may injure yourself with the used equipment. As a result, you can involuntarily introduce a new disease in your body, such as HIV or hepatitis C.
Unless you get treated right away, you also risk the wound getting infected, which may take a toll on your health. Chemical solvents like acids and cleaners can damage your lungs and cause you to become lightheaded.
6. Dealing with Aggressive Patients
Not every patient you meet will be forthcoming. Some patients are highly aggressive and may mistreat you while you’re working. This includes shouting, yelling, and threatening you if they’re not happy with their lab results. Some patients also take it further and may harass you at work by making sexual advances.
Certain patients may also escalate the situation and physically assault you causing you to become injured. In 2020 over 20% of American nurses were physically attacked at work. The patient’s relatives may also share this aggression by attacking you, assaulting you, and filing unnecessary complaints against you. It is unfortunate that no matter how compassionate you may be as a nurse, there will still be patients who may shatter you completely.
7. Poor Emotional Well-being
The stressful working environment will eventually take a toll on you as a nurse. You will start crumbling under pressure and impacting your emotional well-being. You may show signs of depression, anxiety, and symptoms of burnout.
These make you skip work or mishandle patient files, which violates the regulations of HIPAA and can land you in serious trouble. During the COVID-19, most nurses experienced severe mental health crises. These nurses felt isolated alone, with some reaching their wit’s end unable to cope.
Final Thoughts
There is no denying that becoming a nurse is the most challenging profession you have to deal with. The endless work pile, aggrieved patients, exposure to chemicals will all take a toll on you. Unless hospitals get involved and take care of the nursing staff, these problems are here to stay. These factors work in unison, impacting your emotional and physical well-being, which can put your job and life on the line.
