Nurses and Anxiety

While driving home from the grocery store on Sunday ( I know, I know my life is just that exciting).  I was listening to NPR and this show came on that had me so gripped I actually stopped in the driveway of my house to listen to the end of it and had to text my husband to come and get all the cold and frozen stuff out of the car because I could not move (I really did this....and he was really thrilled!).  The show was given by an Emergency Room Chief Attending who reports how he was the perfect student, aced everything, memorized everything and was going to be the best physician ever until....he made a mistake.  He sent an elderly woman home from the ER in acute congestive heart failure because he missed it, he was not perfect.  Two hours later the family rushed the woman back where she died in the ER. 

 This began a quest for this physician to not only face his own imperfection to find other physicians that had made mistakes too.  He found that not only did physicians not want to admit they made any kind of mistakes they did not want to talk about it as it was anxiety producing.  This anxiety led to a decrease in performance, increase in stress,  and a false culture in their profession that all is well.  Physicians have a reputation of closing ranks around each other when a mistake is made leading to sometimes never getting to the real story...but more importantly those involved and colleagues around them from learning from an important teachable moment.  Now this physician runs meetings where mistakes are openly talked about  so everyone can support each other and more importantly learn from it, be honest and support each other.

Several of the nursing students, who I love and adore, are entering their final semester of nursing school.  I stay in touch with many of these students on Face Book and their stress at facing their last semester, passing finals, onto the NCLEX and finding a job has sent their stress off the scale.  I could feel it and see it from their Face Book posts and the panicked multiple texts I was getting.  I realized this stress and anxiety was at worse going to hold back these hugely talented future nurses and at best deny them from really enjoying their final semester of nursing school.  This is not OK.  In Nurse Education we are very good at setting objectives, measuring academic progress through testing, evaluating clinical skills, benchmarks, case studies, computer generated tests over and over to give a normal person carpal tunnel syndrome.

So the first week of October we are starting a NCLEX review/support group at Angie's house.  All my students are invited, no-one will be denied.  There is no cost for this but you have to bring your A game and a good attitude ( I have a really low tolerance for whining!)  The session will start with 30 minutes of yoga, continue with lots of review and end with tea and cake and sympathy (it is a British house after all).  We are teaching these future nurses how to care for their patients and their families.  We must not forget to teach them how to care for each other and most importantly how to care for themselves.