Nurse Practitioner Burnout

How crispy am I? Let me count the ways.

Don't get me wrong. I do really love being a nurse practitioner. I just don't love the paperwork and the tedious part of my job. Most people say that I should just suck it up because I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for my job. True, to a point. I understand the awesome responsibility of my position and the stressors that would ensue. I would just love to have a way to make my job less tedious and more streamlined. Unfortunately, I am not the owner of my practice so I have to follow the herd and make sure that all of the boxes are checked and t's are crossed. We have to not only make sure that we are giving great care but also great education. All of this in your allotted 15 minutes. Actually, the nurse gets the first 5-10 so I get what's left to determine why your abdomen is painful (which can be very time consuming). Lunch usually consists of me stuffing in a frozen dinner of some kind while I chart or try to make phone calls that I can't get to during the day. If I make myself actually go to lunch, I feel like the pile grows like the Gremlins and I will never get out from underneath. The patients bang on the front door pretty much the entire lunch break time and get aggravated that we even close for lunch. There are great things about being a NP too. The ahh ha! moment when a patient understands how a disease process can effect their lives. The look of determination when a patient finally decides to quit smoking after all of the pep talks. The times that you can get a child to take their medicine when no one else can. Watching a teenager grow up into a young adult. Hearing a child say that they want to be just like me when they grow up. Seeing the light come back on after watching the despair almost cause them to commit suicide. The ability to tell a patient that they don't have cancer. These are the things that I live for and put up with the crappy side of medicine.