Feeling Under fire & Overlooked: Identifying workplace challenges faced by experienced nurses and AHP’s.

In your clinical role as senior nurses and AHP’s you have come across all sorts of individuals, whether that be your patients, or the staff you interact with on a regular basis.

The patients come and go, and you have no choice but to accept their uniqueness. Their characters, the affects their conditions are having on them, their professions, or their families.

Some folks are naturally grumpy, and hard to communicate with, others like to share their life stories and you struggle to get a word in edgeways or elicit the information you are after. You use all your skills to make the situation easier for all concerned, and you listen.

Accepting the uniqueness of your colleagues however is a different matter. Again, they come and go, some you get on with really well, you communicate and you collaborate.

Others are prickly, hostile, and can make you feel like something scraped off someone’s shoe. However hard you work, those individuals don’t seem to notice, whether that’s because they just don’t see, have their own agendas, or to say something positive would undermine their reputation as a consultant or other senior staff member. ?

Remember their training may have been completely different to yours. Following the medical model and its hierarchical traditions left little room for anything personal like building relationships with the workforce.

Instead they breezed in chucked orders about, never wrote anything down, shouted at a few timid victims and breezed out again. Far too important for anything else, and reminiscent of a carry- on film. The only thing missing was a salute.

?Although this still maybe the case in some of your clinical environments, the soup of disciplines you interact with nowadays is far richer.

There are more professions and roles to work with, the age range of staff is longer as the retirement age has increased. You work in a multicultural environment with varying traditions and levels of experience, making it vital you make the effort to understand the perspectives of others.

Front line staff are accustomed to ever advancing technology, so if not scrolling on their own phones they will be inputting patient data into a hand held device. Yet there often seems to be something basic missing, like verbal well thought out observation and communication. Younger staff members may not react to the vocal whims of others, assuming it as normal, and therefore acceptable.

?Your patients are sicker and in greater numbers, you have high expectations of each other as professionals to step up to the mark, to keep going, no matter what.

?Over the post pandemic years, staff attrition has plummeted, along with huge rises in sickness levels of core staff unable to cope with the challenges. ?

?Fire-fighting has become the norm.

I can remember times feeling like I was part of a MASH unit (if you remember that TV series) rather than part of a well-oiled machine of patient care.

?As you can imagine, with all these variables the strain on professional relationships starts to show. Getting in the way of you enjoying your role, when all you want to do is look after patients and wish everyone could be nice to each other.

Not a hard ask you might say, but for some it is. Their own stressors get dumped onto someone else, or there may be the feelings that some individuals appear to collude with their own. Rather than supporting or engaging with their team, looking for solutions, or being compassionate towards their staff. There are role comparisons, blurring of professional boundaries and sparks fly.

For caring professions, I understand it feels like some individuals fall short of that attribute.

It’s a well-known fact that staff often get talked at, rather than being listened to and acknowledged for what they contribute. Poor behaviours are either swept under the carpet or explained as “it’s because they are stressed.” and it’s not uncommon to hear phrases like: “It’s the culture of the organisation”, or “It’s a toxic environment” banded about like something that can be changed overnight, when you all know it can’t.

The reality is you can all play your part in making improvements rather than waiting for those on high to change your circumstances.

?By changing the way you view your situation. ?

Providing you with general solutions is not the answer unfortunately. You are all individual, with different beliefs, values, backgrounds and experiences that all influence your perception of current events. So, your solutions will be different. One size really does not fit all.?

Realising this can be different if you choose to look, and getting some help to explore your options is the first step. Don’t wait for the next thunder bolt to come crashing down.

If this sounds like an journey you would like to take, drop me a message and let’s talk.

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