Healthcare Workers - What They Learn to Call Normal

Some things become routine in healthcare long before they should ever become acceptable. We miss meals. We move from witnessing a family’s worst moment to caring for the next patient. We work through exhaustion, staffing challenges, grief, and circumstances that most people will never experience. And somewhere along the way, we begin calling these things normal. I’m grateful to have my latest article, “What Healthcare Workers Learn to Call Normal,” published in the Journal of Nursing (RN-Journal). This piece is about more than burnout. It’s about the complicated relationship many of us have with the work we do. Healthcare has given me experiences, relationships, and a sense of purpose that I wouldn’t trade. But it has also shown me how easily we can mistake our ability to endure difficult conditions for evidence that those conditions are acceptable. As a nurse and healthcare leader, I believe we need to have more conversations about that distinction. Just because healthcare workers have learned to carry something doesn’t mean they should have to. I’m also continuing to explore these experiences through Good in a Crisis, a nonfiction book project examining what healthcare gives us, what it takes from us, and what needs to change. And I want to hear from you. Whether you’re a nurse, physician, respiratory therapist, technician, paramedic, or another healthcare professional, your experiences matter. The difficult moments, the meaningful ones, the things you’ve carried home, and the things you’ve never said out loud. I’m inviting healthcare workers to participate in a voluntary questionnaire, with the option to remain anonymous. Read my published article: https://lnkd.in/gx8TetgU Share your experience for Good in a Crisis: https://lnkd.in/gpzUmKTn Because the people who spend their lives caring for others deserve to have their stories heard, too. #Nursing #HealthcareLeadership #HealthcareWorkers #NurseWellbeing #GoodInACrisis