Keeping your scrubs clean and your sanity (mostly) intact
A mental health nurse who (after stumbling and caffeine fueling through training) knows how tough working in healthcare can get. The burnout, short-staffing & never ending training years. Here I’ll give you honest reflections, & strategies to protect your mental health while navigating the chaos of healthcare. About
PS. Real life resources are on their way – think e-journals, interactive grounding methods, planners and study tips. To help you not just survive but breathe between shifts.
Topics
There’s plenty of advice for people who hate their jobs — the “quit and follow your passion” kind.But what if you actually like your work? You’re good at it, it matters to you, and yet… your shoulders live somewhere near your ears and your brain hums at 120 BPM from 8 a.m. till midnight. That’s…
When your stress is louder than the patient alarms, you know you need a reset. I can already hear it: ‘Healthcare workers don’t have time for on-shift wellness rituals.’ Cue the collective eye-roll — I get it, I really do. That’s exactly why I’m not about to tell you to meditate for an hour or…
🚨Burnout in healthcare is talked about so much it almost becomes background noise – but it’s more than just a buzzword. The reality is it’s heavy, relentless, and doesn’t care how “strong” you are. To me, it feels like I’ve been run over by a night shift and backed over again by the morning one.…
Life Exists Outside of Work (and it’s vital to make time for it.) During what I’d call my “peak burnout season” (around 12 months post-qualifying), I pretty much abandoned the things outside of work that were actually good for me. Not the textbook “eat well, exercise, get fresh air” stuff (though those matter too). I…
Boundaries Are Hard Especially in health fields, where most of us chose the job because we actually care or have an interest in helping people. Saying no feels unhelpful and putting up barriers feels awkward at best, selfish at worst. Add in my former people-pleasing self, coupled with that early career pressure of wanting to…
Busy offices. Noisy wards. Phones pinging. Colleagues chatting. Patients calling. Sometimes your brain feels like it’s running 47 browser tabs at once. Stress replays itself like a bad re-run When I think about the most stressful time in my career (so far), my body doesn’t just remember it — it re-enacts it. Chest tightens, throat…
How I fell (and stumbled) Into Healthcare Let me start with this: I did not always know I was destined for my chosen profession. That couldn’t be further from the truth. At 16, I left school and picked my A levels like I was choosing sweets — no plan, no vision, no real interest. Unsurprisingly,…
“Burnout” — we hear it all the time, right?But do we ever actually stop and think about what it really means? And more importantly, whether it might be happening to us (or the people around us)? The truth is, burnout doesn’t just drain your energy — it can quietly creep into every corner of life:…
Keeping your scrubs clean and your sanity (mostly) intact
Scrubs And Sanity 