We’ve written about burnout before as it relates to physicians. But nurse burnout is no less real, as anyone following the news today will know. Some 2,200 burned out nurses walked off the job in Chicago in mid-September. A day later there were strikes in California, Arizona and Florida.
What is stress? Let’s see: How about police or military personnel finding themselves faced with difficult shoot/no-shoot decisions. To be sure, the possibility of getting shot is definitely a cause of stress, and the symptoms of stress in those situations are very clear. Time horizons contract and the immediacy of the situation can overwhelm all else; the fight or flight impulse can take over, sometimes with disastrous effects.
