Rediscovering Your Purpose as a Nurse: The Incredible Impact of Your Calling

WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS?!?

Do you ever feel this way, wondering how and why you are in the job you are in? 

Ironically, it’s often frustration that leads to this question, and yet pausing to answer this exact question can make that frustration melt away.

Why DO you work as a nurse?

Why are you a nurse in the first place?

It’s easy when things are going wrong, when you are overwhelmed, to focus on the problems at hand, the never-ending obstacles that keep you from getting out on time and with some of your sanity intact. 

So again, why ARE you a nurse?

Why do we even need nurses?

What do nurses even do and does it matter?

If this is too broad, too vague, then zoom in.

Who did you help today at work? Make a list.

How did you help them, through physical intervention, education, emotional support, problem solving, disease management? If you’re ambitious, make a list of each individual way you helped your patients- it’s going to be a long list.

How did the way you showed up honor them as a person, worthy of care and consideration?

What impact would it have had on them if you weren’t there to provide that care?

What is the ripple effect of helping that one person?

Now multiply that by all the patients and family members you have impacted this week… this year.

Throughout your career.

You may feel some resistance answering these questions. Often, in a truly annoying fashion, our brains like to come up with all the reasons that care could have been better, how our capacity to help is limited by system structures, time, or resources. And when we let these thought patterns go unchecked, we dismiss the true value of the care that we DID provide. 

This is more than just something that keeps us cranky, it undermines our resilience and obscures our purpose. 

Anchoring into your purpose can help you settle down when the stressors of work seem ready to blow you over. It grounds us. By focusing on WHY we do the work we do, we can find moments throughout our days that are in alignment with our calling. We can see how our care for people is so much more than a series of tasks, and as a result, we can see that care is NOT dependent on the perfect work situation to still be meaningful.

Acknowledging the meaning and the impact of our work as nurses establishes an environment of safety within ourselves. We don’t feel incapable of continuing on. We don’t feel frustrated. We don’t berate ourselves or the system for not working well enough.

And we’re not distracted by the things that went wrong.

We focus on the patient.

We focus on the care.

When we know exactly why we do this work, the burden of doing it lessens. 

Happy Nurses’ Week.

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P.S. If you feel yourself struggling to stay engaged in this work, if you want to be a nurse AND you feel like it is getting to be too much, send me an email. You are not alone, 60% of the nursing workforce is feeling this way or has felt this way at some point. It's ok to need help and support, it's normal.

If this sounds like exactly what you need, give yourself the nurses day gift you deserve and reach out for some help. We can find a time that works for you to unpack all of this and see if working together will ease your distress. I hope you will reach out. Megan@NursingBeyondTheJob.com