It is now more important than ever to prioritize our mental health and tune into our inner selves. Today, I wanted to share my story of how I became the woman I am today, and the 5 key steps I took to mitigate burnout. I’ve learned a lot along the way- about myself, about the world, about healthcare.
My desire to become a nurse wasn’t innate or something I wanted since I was a kid. My desire to become a nurse was rooted in my desire to serve and to be useful. I wanted a purpose, so I chose to become a nurse.
I was a lost freshman in an out of state college with a random roommate, on a campus with very few peers who looked like me. I felt out of place, estranged, and like I didn’t belong. But wait – isn’t this what everyone feels? When we’re trying to figure ourselves out, when we’re trying to find our identities, we all feel this way, right?
The future seemed bleak. College was way more expensive than I or my immigrant parents had expected. My parents were going to pick up more odd jobs, and I’d tutor and babysit in between studying for biology and religion. I tried to get my foot in the door by volunteering at free clinics, organizing excel spreadsheets and paper charts, licking envelopes to send to donors for grants to keep the free clinic running. I didn’t know any physicians, my parents never went to college. I didn’t know pharmacists or nurse practitioners, and if I did, they were friends of distant relatives back at home in Jeonju, South Korea, who were unaware of my existence.
At this point, all I knew was that I wanted to help people, and hopefully simultaneously make the sacrifice that my parents made by immigrating here to the US worth it.
I wanted to help people the way the nurses helped my mom through her fertility journey, her miscarriage, and her ectopic pregnancy. The way that I wanted to be helped as we journeyed through immigrant life without health insurance. At Furman University, a short 2 hours away from home, I made a friend. And her aunt was an emergency nurse practitioner. After unashamedly pouring out my heart and my doubts to her, she explained to me how she grew to be where she is today and it was then that I applied to nursing school.
I told myself that this would be my path, my trajectory, and that I, too, would help others.
There was a lot of doubt in this season of life, and what 18 year old Clara didn’t know, is that this would just be the beginning. The doubt wouldn’t just be from myself, but from my parents whose only perspective on nursing was from their home country, where nurses are disrespected, looked down upon and unappreciated. The constant reminder from my Korean parents was, “You can still go to medical school after you become a nurse.” Sure, I could. Maybe that’s what I want, too. But maybe I’ll love nursing. And that, I did.
I thrived in nursing school. I felt like I finally felt some sense of purpose.
Purpose that was tangible in patient care, skills lab and the hospital halls, and a world different from organizing paper charts or mailing out letters for donations at the free clinic.
I loved learning. I loved talking to patients. I loved the sense of purpose each member of healthcare team had in the care of the 1 patient in the center of it all. It made sense. It felt human. It felt like I could pour my heart into this work for a sense of meaning. But while I grew in my skill and my dreams, I was figuring out how to make it work as a DACA recipient, my legal status looming over me, telling me that I didn’t belong. Every day was a struggle in knowing that I was working toward being a good member of society, collecting accolades and titles, while trying to find my identity as a Korean American woman, while the decisions of my parents made 15 years prior told me that I wasn’t enough.
I cried many nights and went to lectures smiling.
I felt alone and was a leader in my nursing cohort.
I doubted who I was and who I’d become and graduated nursing school.
I was in such a rush to do the next thing.
I was accepted to Emory and Vanderbilt’s WHNP programs without nursing experience. But something told me that this wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. So I withdrew and focused on laying down the foundation for my nursing career at the bedside, learning how to be a nurse.
My first 2 years as a nurse was a blur. Everyone tells you, “Real life nursing is much different from what you learn in school.” And this was true.
No one told me how much I’d question my abilities. No one told me that I’d have anxiety before every shift. No one taught me the importance of having interests outside of nursing. No one told me that any of these feelings were valid. I felt like a fraud. An imposter. I was licensed, credentialed, and trained to care for these patients, but on my days off, I struggled to take care of myself. I began to make my whole identity, my job. I needed to refocus on my career so that it could better serve me, so that I could better serve my patients. I decided to go back to school to be able to serve my patients long term, be their main source of preventative care, and to be an inclusive, affirming provider to all.
As I share my life on social media, I’m constantly reminded that it can portray a sense of “perfection” or “togetherness,” which is something I intentionally try to avoid, but the art of social media can sometimes make that inevitable. We don’t feel inclined to share our bad days- the days we can’t get out of bed.
But in contrast, social media brought me a sense of purpose: to show it all, despite it all. Social media taught me that not everyone has intrusive thoughts or that little things felt like big things to them.
Social media taught me that I was never alone in my struggles – in life, in healthcare, in relationships. I’m never as alone as I feel. With all that being said, I was and am carrying a lot.
But I’ve learned a lot along the way, and I want to tell you 5 ways to prevent burnout. Here are the 5 things I wish I heard before starting this journey.
1. Make work friends.
They will get you the way that no one else can. Family/friends are helpful and you need them. But no one will understand the unique frustrations and stressors the way other people in healthcare do.
2. Discover other avenues to diversify your income.
Start a blog, sell items on Etsy, teach a skill. It’s true that nursing is not many people’s sole soure of income, especially in this day and age where it can lead to burnout quickly.
3. Leave work at work.
Turn off work texts and emails. Try not talking too much about work with your partner or family/friends. Make a rule to yourself that when you take those scrubs off, you are done thinking and talking about work. After all, they aren’t paying you to work off the clock, right?
4. Find hobbies to that help you relieve stress + bring you joy.
You are more than a nurse. I want you to say that to yourself. I am more than a nurse. You are more than your ability to adequately code a patient or start IVs. You are more than your credentials and your academic accolades. You are a whole human being and you cannot make your whole identity your job, or your job will become your life.
5. Ask for help.
Don’t be afraid to ask your supervisor for feedback. Don’t be afraid to ask your techs for help, your colleagues for help, your providers to explain something to you. Don’t be afraid to seek therapy or professional help. I talk about this on my social media a lot, but for us Asian Americans, it has been ingrained in us that mental health is embarrassing and weak. It is not. It is an illness, just like PCOS or asthma, and we wouldn’t neglect those illnesses, right?
So if there’s one main thing you take away today, I want you to remember to prioritize your mental health. None of this is easy, but we need to be our best self advocates.
Our generation will be different. We have learned to adapt to so many unknowns. We are choosing ourselves over our career and the opinions of others. We will prioritize our mental health.
So put yourself first.
Take care of yourself.
Advocate for yourself.
Because our patients deserve us at our best.
xx,
Clara
