Balancing Act

The relative rarity of truly entitled patients and families is such a delight.  My ward doesn't have an ice machine, and we also don't carry straws.  These would be mortal sins at any other hospital job I have ever had, and yet here nobody has ever made a big deal out of it. In New Zealand I have never had a patient scold or scream at me for pouring them "hot" (aka room temp) water.  Sure, people like their tea in a particular way, but they've been so sweet about correcting me if I get it wrong.

Work-life balance has been a buzzy phrase since even before I was a nursing student (more than 15 years ago, how did that happen so fast?)  The emphasis is always on the individual, though, fix your own burnout, make sure that you balance your work and life.  I have hope that when the irreverent Gen Z nurses are in charge, their attitude towards work being for the paycheck can ripple through the culture. It’s so healthy.  Calling-schmalling. Sure, I'm drawn to helping people and I love being present as a helper and a genuinely caring person in intimate moments of pain and illness.  But I am ultimately working so that I can have a life outside of the job.  I too, am a human with physical and psychological needs.  And I cannot produce ice cubes from my… thin air.

At my last job in the US I felt like such a subversive by encouraging my coworkers to just turn off their work phone during their (UNPAID) lunch break.  This was hardly an act of individualistic rebellion, it was actually an instruction from my therapist. Time out for a real break during a the long day at a highly emotionally draining job is a necessity.  Carving a tiny 30 minute space away from the bedside during a 12 hour long shift should not require a contrarian attitude and cussed stubbornness. There should be a plan for people having a break every single time they work, right?  Right?  We all have to eat. Heck, sometimes we even need the bathroom. In America hospital attitudes towards nurses can be so toxic, like you have to be superhuman, or inhuman, and constantly accessible.   How many times have I seen someone barge into the breakroom to chat with a nurse about an extremely non-emergent matter that could have been a post-it note left at a workstation.  Or better yet, could have been taken care of while they nurse was in lunch by anybody else.  The number of times a patient needs a nurse and it is for that glass of ice water, something that really doesn’t need my credentials.

New Zealand's tendency has been to treat me as a human being first and nurse second.  I have encountered this in subtle and sometimes overt ways.  And it shouldn’t be shocking but when I pause to consider if really has been.

My coworker with an adorable toddler doing a kid handoff with her partner (also a nurse) so that the last few minutes of the shift she has the kid on her lap nursing while while we finish handover so she can go home with Mama.

My manager urging a nurse to leave early, because she needed to drive across town for an appointment right after work and he reasoned she’d never get there in time with after school traffic unless she left early.

Taking my vacation time and when I came back zero passive aggressive comments, just genuine interest in where I went and what cool things I got to see.

These little human factors don’t reduce our qualities as nurses, they probably make us more sound, more well-adjusted, more prepared to comfort and tend and be good at our jobs and good to our coworkers.

The day I realized how much this humanity had soaked into my skin was about a month ago when I told a patient I would help him get dressed for bed as he asked, but I had to take my break first.  He treated this as perfectly normal, understandable, of course I would need my break.  He would plan on dressing for bed in about 30 minutes, when i got back.  Wait, what?  I already anticipate that getting accustomed to the lack of recriminations for occasionally putting my own human needs first will make coming back to work in the US really hard.