Outgrowing Nursing Friends

In last month’s blog post, I discussed the grieving process of releasing the realities we may hold related to the nursing profession.

I discussed my journey of facing the truths. By facing those truths, it allowed me to transition myself beyond the healthcare system to make my own path in nursing. A path where I was not compromising my own soul and core values.

The grieving process that took place in those days also involved the grieving of the friendships I had made in that healthcare system.

Our friendships we make in nursing are like none other. We have this collectiveness that bonds us. It is why, when you meet a fellow nurse, that instant “me too” collab occurs. I cannot tell you how many times I have been out to dinner or on a flight when that collab occurs.

You are talking to a stranger; you start gabbing only to have that “I’m a nurse too” moment. By now, my husband knows to take a seat because we are instant long-lost friends who never met, yet we just reunited. We have to discuss the type of nursing we do, where we are from, and so on.

Something that bonds us is the endurance of this field. We endured nursing school and that is a common bond like nothing else. In nursing school, they strip you down to see what you are made of. How much perseverance is in you?

Is this done to assess our tolerance? Whatever the reason, it certainly bonds us.

You do not hear the horror stories of nursing school occurring in marketing or business school. My friends in college thought I was crazy when I would share what my nursing school days were like compared to theirs.

Then we graduate and move into our nursing jobs. What a transition that is, but we make friends, and that eases the process. These friends become our comrades. They become our back when we are unsure. They are our eyes and ears when we need assurance. They are our sounding board when we are mad at that doctor. We share things our family and friends outside of healthcare simply do not understand. At the end of those rough days, these colleagues are the ones we go out with to unload about the day. Who else is going to understand the gravity of your day like another nurse?

We are bonding with each other over the trauma. We went into battle together. Some wars are won, and some are lost. We recap the day, reciting what was said by who, what went right, and what went wrong. Essentially rehashing the shift.

This is cathartic for a while. I know for me it was for years. Until one day I sat there thinking how draining it was. Rehashing the shift over again. Why? We could agree that what we were enduring in the field was not fair, the suits did not care, and we were just pawns in the game. This worked … until one day it didn’t.

I remember going to dinner at our local wing joint and everyone was talking. You know the kind where we get fired up. Until one night I was not fired up. I got quiet, I sat there, I just listened. I listened as everyone rehashed another unit story. I was deflated. I was tired. Tired of reliving the hell of the day through the war stories. Tired of knowing that this was it, things were not going to change. Tired of relying on these pow wow sessions that turned into nothing more than just that.

I drove home that night and thought, these sessions will continue long after I step away from the table. I will be replaced by another nurse. Someone else will accommodate the doctor’s last-minute needs, be a triage hero with an available bed on the unit for the ER, be the helper to the nurse and take report on their post op, get them settled into their room while the other nurse finishes up in another room. Someone will replace me … and that was ok.

I was not only backing away from the table, but also the place I had called home for so many years.

The people I worked with, the halls I had walked, the multi-disciplinary relationships I had made, the patients and their families I had come to love over the years. I had to grieve the loss of those friends I had made. We spend more time with these people than we do our own friends and family. We spend holidays with them. We make the best of those holiday shifts with potlucks or ordering food. I had to grieve this loss as well.

The turnover in nursing is inevitable, but stagnation kills. I could not allow that to happen to me. You have to look at the potentials beyond the relationships.

Trust me, your real friends are not going anywhere. I still get together with my core group of nursing friends. You are not losing those friends. The relationships you do lose may not have been as deep as you believed – or they were deep by situation. Meaning, they were only deep because you were in the trenches together. Once out of those trenches, the commonalities change, and you don’t have much to converse over.

The trauma bonding has subsided and that is good with my soul.

On the contrary, if you’d like to form a new bond with other nurses who are interested in making the transition from bedside to business owner, sign up for the next free FNI informational webinar.