Questioning Your Nursing Career? Five Ways to Reconnect with your Fizzling Passion

Choosing a career would seem like a simple thing, but it can be very daunting. It is a complex decision that takes a lot of time. Sometimes, human beings are born with an affinity for a certain passion or skill, showing potential at a young age. Other times, people develop skills for particular jobs through their experiences and upbringing.

After a considerable time in one career, it’s natural for anyone to feel burnt out or have negative experiences associated with professional life. It can affect your passion for work, and you may feel disconnected from your job. Some careers are more likely to induce this feeling. Entrepreneurs can get discouraged after a few failed attempts and lose their passion. Nurses are also vulnerable owing to the nature of their work.

Nurses interact with patients daily and work in a broad capacity to provide quality care and the best treatment possible. Positive experiences and results create joy and passion for the job, and negative experiences can have a demotivating effect. Having proper education can help you deal with the professional crisis in any field.

If you have a passion for nursing, you can join nursing schools for effective learning. You can learn how to deal with the various elements of the job or even upscale to better positions. You can also take online nursing education courses as supplementary education or a full-time course to deepen your knowledge of the nursing environment.

This article will discuss some factors that make nurses question their passion and ways to reconnect with your work again.

Negative Factors

To understand how to deal with the diminishing passion, we need to first focus on what factors contribute to this doubt.

1. Professional Burnout

In a survey by American journal of nursing, 15% of the nurses listed burnout as their reason for leaving their profession. Burnout is not an isolated feeling; it results from chronic negative experiences and feelings on the job. Significant causes of burnout are: –

Exhaustion

Not having a proper routine can be unsettling for many. Considering the nursing profession and its schedules, you are very vulnerable to exhaustion, contributing to burnout.

Reduced Efficiency

Exhaustion has adverse effects on the personal and professional lives of nurses. Fatigue reduces the energy and focus required to perform efficiently at a job. Exhausted nurses cannot perform at total efficiency, affecting their professional lives.

Professional attitude

The daily professional behavior nurses have to experience also affects their passion for their job. According to an article by Journal of Nursing Management, workplace incivility is one of the most common reasons nurses develop a negative attitude towards their profession.

Now that we have discussed a few root problems, we can discuss how to deal with the doubts about your nursing career. (1)

How to Find Your Passion Again?

If you start doubting your professional choice as a nurse, then you can take steps to try and reconnect to your passion as follows: –

1. Evaluate your Reasons

The easiest and immediate step that can be taken to reignite your passion for nursing is to explore why you became a nurse. Everyone has heroes or experiences that helped them set the goal for a particular profession. By exploring those reasons, you can renew that feeling.

Sometimes, your expectations from a profession can also cause a disconnect, and by reassessing those expectations, you can take control over your choice and reignite your passion.

2. Research Nursing Heroes

Another step you can take is to research and study the lives of the big names in the nursing field. You might find nurses who have gone through similar stages, and you can learn from their experiences. It is especially true for patient dissatisfaction, as nurses deal directly with the patients, and their negative experience also affects them.

3. Keep a Positive Attitude

It is imperative to keep a positive attitude in life. Sometimes, there are things that we can control, and sometimes we have no control. Some people are highly affected by the things they can’t control and blame themselves for being powerless.

Especially for nurses, they can blame themselves without even knowing it for things they had no control over. It is essential to assess yourself regularly and keep a positive attitude towards your nursing career.

4. Field Reassessment

Every career has multiple field options. A nursing career also has a lot of options. If you feel like your current field isn’t working for you and are constantly demotivated, you should try a different nursing field; maybe a change in environment and the workload will relieve stress and renew your passion for a nursing career.

5. Nursing Values

Values provide a layout complete tasks ethically and morally. Nursing values are essential in this regard, and there are proven adopted methods—like 6 Cs of nursing—available.

NHS England developed the 6 Cs of nursing, and multiple variants are available to study. But the basic 6 Cs are care, compassion, communication, competence, courage, and commitment.

The purpose of 6 Cs is to ensure that patients get the best care available. It makes the nurses’ jobs more manageable, and they will also be satisfied with their careers. (2)

Summary

Human beings tend to have expectations from anything, and if those expectations are not met, they become demotivated. Nursing is a demanding career, and nurses deal with life and death situations every day. It can take a toll after a while, and they feel disconnected from their passion.

If you are a nurse or know someone is feeling this way, the steps mentioned can help you reignite your nursing passion and teach you how to deal with such issues and much more.