Burnout and Relationships Part One: Coworkers

Hey friends,

Coworkers can be one of the first relationships to be hit by burnout usually because they are present when it is happening real time.

Some red flags:

- Getting verbally aggressive or yelling at a coworker.

- Judging or being hypercritical of your coworker.

- Complaining about your coworkers to other coworkers, your friends, and family on a regular basis.

- Writing vague posts on social media about how terrible your coworkers are.

I get that coworker relationships can be hard especially in a high stress environment, but let's be real, just because there is stress or someone else is acting like a douche, doesn't mean you need to as well.

FOUR WAYS TO BEGIN FIXING IT:

1. Before you lose your cool, do a little self check-in.

Healthy relationships require the willingness to own your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Ask yourself what are you thinking and what you are hoping to get out of the interaction and then what will be the results of the interaction?

And ask yourself if you will like the person you are being and result you will creates doing said thing?

2. Do not focus on being friends focus on being able to work together.

One place people really go wrong is that they think conflict resolution means being on the friendly side of the spectrum. But this is a huge jump for our brains to make and easy for it to fail.

Instead of focusing on being friends, focus on how you two can make working together as tolerable as possible.

Start by writing down the challenges you have with your coworker and without changing the person and make one solution for each that you can do.

3. If there is a problem related to workplace safety or culture, recognize your scope of influence and get help if needed.

It is one thing to have a coworker that you wish didn't talk so much, but if a coworker is doing something that is truly a problem to patient safety or creating a toxic work (harassing, etc) escalate it and get help.

When you talk to your higher up, focus on keeping things as objective, factual, and specific as possible. And try to come with an idea for a solution to the problem.

4. Have compassion for your coworkers as a human being.

Nursing is not an easy field, it can be high stress with really high stakes. As nurses, we all come from different backgrounds that will flavor how we handle what's happening.

Remember your coworker is first and foremost a human being doing the best they can.

They deserve love and compassion, just like you.

I believe in you and your possibilities,

Mary B.

P.S.

I want to help you end burnout and get the nursing career that you dreamed about in nursing school.

Because you deserve a job that doesn't suck the life out of you, that you don't wake up everyday dreading going to.

Get started today by clicking her in on the link to sign up for your free consult.