When You Want to Give Up as a Nurse Practitioner
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Show notes:
I recently got the question from a new nurse practitioner, “what do you do when you want to give up as a nurse practitioner?”
I’ve definitely been there before myself, and with the stress of this last year and a half, I know a lot of other new nurse practitioners and NP students are feeling that way, too.
When You Want to Give Up as a Nurse Practitioner
In this week’s video, I’m covering what to do when you feel like this, including:
The most important questions to ask yourself to help sort through your feelings and get to the root of feeling like yourself again
Real-life contexts of what this may look like for you, and the options to consider
A few personal stories about how I experienced burnout and what I’ve done to cope with it
If you liked this post, also check out:
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Hey there, welcome to the Real World NP podcast.
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I'm Liz Rohr, family nurse practitioner, educator, and founder of Real World NP, an educational
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company for nurse practitioners in primary care.
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I'm on a mission to equip and guide new nurse practitioners so that they can feel
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confident, capable, and take the best care of their patients.
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If you're looking for clinical pearls and practice tips without the fluff, you're in
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the right place.
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Make sure you subscribe and leave a review so you won't miss an episode.
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Plus, you'll find links to all the episodes with extra goodies over at realworldnp.com
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slash podcast.
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Well, hey there, it's Liz Rohr from Real World NP.
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You are watching NP Practice Made Simple, weekly videos to help save you time, frustration,
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and help you learn faster so you can take the best care of your patients.
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In this week's video, I want to address a question that I got from a nurse practitioner.
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If she has this question, I imagine other people do too, and that is the question
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of what do you do when you feel like you want to give it all up and just give
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up completely?
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When I got that question, it really broke my heart.
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I really have a lot of compassion for this person, and compassion for you if you're
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feeling this way too.
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I'm no stranger to compassion fatigue, stress, and burnout, and I've actually made
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a couple of different videos about that, which I can link to down below.
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In this video, I basically want to walk through the steps that I would recommend
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and the questions that I have to start, because it really depends on your situation,
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but there are really some core principles that I can recommend for you to take if
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you're feeling like that.
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I think the first question I have for her or for you, if you're going through
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this, is let's go back to basics to start.
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When was the last time you drank water and ate regular food and vegetables, and
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how much are you sleeping at night, and are you drinking excessive amounts of
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caffeine?
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Let's start with the real basics, because if we ask ourselves those questions,
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I think that just bare minimum, if those things are not on point,
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and they're not going to be perfect, they're never perfect, but how far
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off from ideal are they?
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Because if we don't have those things in place, we are not going to have
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the bandwidth to deal with all the other stuff.
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So just foundationally make sure that you're going back to basics,
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all of those things.
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So question number two is, when was the last time you took a vacation?
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Because this last year, I have no words, right?
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None of us have any words for how hard this last year has been,
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especially for healthcare providers, whether you were a nurse in grad school
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working as a nurse and then also doing grad school classes,
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if you have been working as a nurse practitioner, if you have young children
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at home that didn't have childcare for a really long time,
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there are so many factors that have led us all to near burnout,
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myself included, regardless of what's going on at work, right?
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So when was the last time you took a vacation?
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And if you haven't taken one in a while, when can you next take one
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the soonest possible, even if it's just another day off, right?
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Or a week, or take two full weeks, right?
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The other alternative is that you can consider taking a leave of absence.
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I think that the next steps and questions that I have,
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unfortunately, are really hard to think about in a very clear way,
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unless we have the space.
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When we're in the middle of working on all of the things that we're working
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on and all the stressors that we have on our plate,
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it's really hard to think about how to get out of it until we have that space.
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And taking care of ourselves, like taking breaks and taking vacations
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and having fun are just so crucial to regular functioning,
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not just when you're feeling really burnt out and like you want to give up.
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So I say about a leave of absence just to share a personal anecdote.
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So I nearly burnt out of practice after three years as a nurse practitioner.
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I've shared about that a little bit.
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That's when I decided to start Real World NP.
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And I had the privilege and fortune to be able to take three full months off.
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And so I left my job.
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I didn't have another job lined up.
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I took three full months just to decompress and get space
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and come back to myself as a person, not just as a nurse practitioner, right?
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So I came back to myself as a person, and it really helped me think straight.
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The other thing that's happened I haven't shared a ton about
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is that despite going through that process, starting Real World NP about two years ago,
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I've actually, I had to take a leave of absence from my clinical job now,
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like as I'm doing this work, because even though I love it, it's like, it's hard.
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It's really hard in the context of COVID and the context of being a recovering workaholic
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and not having great self-care practices in the first place that I am always working on, right?
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So I ran out of sick time and vacation time.
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I wasn't working that much.
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And I had to use a lot of my sick time in the last year because of COVID.
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And so I talked with my medical provider, my medical director, rather,
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and we decided that I would take a leave of absence.
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And it was unpaid, but it protected my job.
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And that was really helpful for me to get that space, again,
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of coming back to myself as a person, like human first,
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which my friend Diana talks about, human first, nurse second.
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And so that is an option to, I mean, you really have to look at your own financial situation
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and what supports you have, but definitely having that conversation that that something
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like that is not off the table, especially in the context of the last year.
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So step one, question one, how are the basics of self-care going?
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And like, can you drink some water?
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Number two is when was your last vacation?
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And how much time can you take off the soonest possible?
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Like just you yourself doesn't have to be with your partner or with your kids,
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if you have kids or anything like that, like just you taking your own downtime.
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The third piece of that is when you get that downtime.
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What I did when I started Real World NP is that I took those three months off,
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but the whole time I was just creatively brainstorming.
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Again, even if this is just one day, how can you creatively brainstorm how you want to
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not even solutions, not even like alternative things or how you're going to fix things at work?
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Like, how do you want to feel and what do you love?
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Like, what could you do all day long that you just love?
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So for me, I went, I just, I ran through the gamut.
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I was like, well, I love tech.
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I'm a nerd, nothing against informatics people.
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But I was like, maybe I'll do informatics.
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Maybe I'll be an associate professor.
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Maybe I will start a business.
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Maybe I will do a side hustle.
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Maybe I'll do Botox.
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My friend was doing a Botox, opening her own Botox practice.
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And I don't love Botox, but I was like, you know,
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this is an interesting procedural skill set.
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Like, maybe I want to do this.
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It makes a lot of money, right?
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I just thought about all of the options and that advice that I was given
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was given by somebody who is a physician who went through a similar experience of burnout.
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And he told me about that.
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That's what got him into informatics in the first place.
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So thinking about, regardless of the situation of anything else going on,
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just freely brainstorming how you want to feel and what you actually love to do.
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And then the last part is, depending on how much time you can take off,
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what your situation is at home, financially speaking,
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the next thing that I'd recommend is sort of like a brain dump of what you can get.
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This kind of like step three is just like wild brainstorming of like anything is possible.
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And then the step four is like, let's come back to reality a little bit
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and let's just brainstorm, brain dump exactly all the things that are terrible.
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What do you want to give up on?
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Is it the healthcare industry?
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Is it that you're so frustrated that you can't get your patients the care they need
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that you just don't even want to participate anymore?
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Totally valid.
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And also, I didn't start by saying all of these things are super, super normal.
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I just want to normalize all of this, right?
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But that fourth piece is like, you know,
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is it the healthcare industry that's bothering you
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and you just don't want to participate anymore?
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And I think that's totally valid.
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And I think that what I'd recommend is thinking about,
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for me, like real talk, the healthcare industry is messed up.
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And the choice that I've made is starting Real World NP,
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which is an educational platform, but it's also a business.
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And the way that I would like to make change in the world
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is by making access, free access to high quality medical education
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for new nurse practitioners, like on YouTube.
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I also have paid courses and products that have continuing education coverage
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so that people can use their work benefits so that it's, again, still accessible.
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I'm working on some other things too,
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but I know ultimately, I don't know where this is going to go,
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but I know that my building a company and financial assets
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to make an impact in a big way,
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that's how I cope with the healthcare industry being the way that it is, right?
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So that's my thing, but you have to figure out what's going to work for you.
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How do you process through the healthcare industry being the way that it is
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if that's the thing that's bothering you?
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Can you process that and come up with a course of action
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that is a good fit for you, your personality, and your skill set?
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Because I'm not a lobbyist and I'm an introvert, right?
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Even though I'm on the internet,
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I'm trying to figure out the ways that I can do things,
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and there isn't just one way, right?
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So we can still contribute.
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Everyone, like in a play, there's all the different parts
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and they all make the play, right?
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So what is your part?
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And so is it the healthcare industry?
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Is it something at your workplace?
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Just brain dumping all of that stuff after you've had that space
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and then deciding what can I do and what can I not do?
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And what can I live with and what can't I live with?
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And what are the potential things
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that I can do to take actions on to make this better, right?
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Is it a workflow situation?
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Is it a delegation problem?
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Is it a staffing problem?
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Is it a paperwork thing?
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Is there something else that you can do
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to mitigate those stressors at your job?
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Another thing that I talked about with one of my mentees is that
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at my clinic, people want to cut down on their hours,
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but financially, they can't necessarily do that.
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And so the way that they get around that is through
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doing projects that are not just clinical stuff,
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like what professional development type of things can you do
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even if you're in your first year?
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Do you want to get involved with HIV care?
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Do you want to get involved with maternal health, LGBTQIA health, right?
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What are the initiatives that you really are passionate about?
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And the way that they do that is through getting grants.
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So your clinic might have a grant writer,
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or you could just write a grant in collaboration with your medical director or supervisor
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so that you can get your hours covered.
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So basically, they apply for a grant,
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and they have four hours per week, one full session,
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that they get to dedicate to that project because of a grant that they received.
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So the clinic still gets money, right?
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We're still getting revenue to the clinic.
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We're not losing money.
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The individual is not losing their income,
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and they also get to do things that they want to do.
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There's a lot of things that I talked about in this video,
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but the main points if you're feeling like you want to give up
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is one, again, checking on self-care, basic, basic, basic, right?
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Just drink water, eat enough food,
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maybe a little bit of exercise might make you feel better, sleeping enough,
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limiting the caffeine.
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I got to listen to this myself.
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And number two, what was number two?
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I forgot there for a second.
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Staking a vacation, whether it's a day or if it's two weeks
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or if it's a leave of absence.
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And then number three, thinking about how you want to feel
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and what you actually love to do aside from reality, right?
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Just potentially considering reality,
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but just giving yourself the permission to just wildly brainstorm.
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And then number four, what are some kind of more specific strategic things
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that you can do to look at and analyze and brain dump?
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What are those things that are bothering you?
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And what is it that you can control?
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What can you not control?
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What are some ways that you can process your feelings
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that are very valid and also come to an empowered place
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that you can still exist in a system or exist with those things
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despite them, if that makes sense.
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So anyway, if you want to watch some more videos about burnout,
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compassion, fatigue, and self-care, I've linked to those down below.
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I have at least two of those videos.
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Let me know if you want to hear more videos like this
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or if you have any other topic requests.
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I love to hear them.
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I hope this video was helpful.
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And if you're feeling this way, definitely take good care of yourself.
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You're not alone and you're doing really great work in the world.
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So thank you so much.
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Thank you so much for watching.
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Hang in there and I'll see you soon.
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That's our episode for today.
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Thank you so much for listening.
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Make sure you subscribe, leave a review, and tell all your NP friends
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so together we can help as many nurse practitioners as possible
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give the best care to their patients.
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If you haven't gotten your copy of the ultimate resource guide for the new NP,
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head over to realworldnp.com slash guide.
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You'll get these episodes sent straight to your inbox every week
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with notes from me, patient stories, and extra bonuses
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I really just don't share anywhere else.
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Thank you so much again for listening.
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Take care and talk soon.
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