Guilt & Unrealistic Expectations

“So please remember this: You did not cause the problems that brought people into your care, you tried to help.”

Stuart doesn’t think working life should suffer the scourge of unrealistic expectations. In this piece, he explains why and exactly how damaging they can be.

Topics Covered In This Article

Introduction

Why These Things Are Unhealthy

Understanding What’s In Your Power

You Can’t Always Have The Answers

Conclusion

Introduction

I want to talk to you today about something that really blights the working life and the quality of life of so many Nurses.

Now I'm coming to you from the perspective of a Nurse who works in mental health, but I'm pretty sure that this is true for all aspects of nursing, and, indeed, pretty much all aspects of care altogether. It's the idea of unrealistic expectations where people will expect us to fix, to solve health problems, be they mental health or otherwise, that may have taken years, decades even, to develop.

And they expect us to fix them within a matter of weeks or even days.

Why These Things Are Unhealthy

And if we don't, then we're considered to be a failure.

People will try to make us feel guilty.

They'll even threaten us.

I've known that has happened to a couple of Nurses.

We put ourselves at genuine risk for failing to meet somebody else's impossible and arbitrary deadlines.

We put ourselves at genuine risk for failing to meet somebody else's impossible and arbitrary deadlines.

People will go to social media to talk about how useless either we are or our organization is or both.

And what's worse, some of us actually start to agree with them.

We start to believe that, "Yes. We should have been able to do better. We should have sorted this out", but, realistically, that's just not possible.

Understanding What’s In Your Power

And we don't need to feel guilty for being unable to do what's not within our power as human beings.

And we don't need to feel guilty for being unable to do what's not within our power as human beings

Look at it this way.

Imagine you're walking down the road and it's pension day.

There's a little old lady.

She's just come out of the bank where she has withdrawn some of the money that's been electronically deposited for her earlier that day.

She's got a handbag over her arm.

She's got a wad of notes in her hand which she's just about to put in the handbag when a couple of likely lads come running down the street they knock her over, they take the money.

One of them stomps on her head for good measure.

You're about 50 yards away.

What will you do?

Will you walk across to the other side of the road?

No.

Of course you won't because you're a Nurse.

And what brought you into this profession is the attempt to help.

So you rush up to this elderly lady who's lying there in a pool of her own blood.

You shout for someone else to call an ambulance, which they do, but while that ambulance is on its way, this little lady who, as far as you know, has done nothing to hurt anyone, dies from a catastrophic head injury in your arms, bleeding all over your new jeans.

Now, the question I have is; do you feel guilty?

Well, of course you might. I'm sure some Nurses would.

But I would argue that you shouldn't.

You didn't cause this, you're the one who tried to help.

You tried as best you could, in the circumstances in which you found yourself, to make things better, which is a damn sight more than most people did on the high street that morning.

Most of them crossed over the road, darted into the nearest shop, pretending they weren't there, or they hadn't seen.

Some just stood and gorped.

You, you're one of the few people in our society who was prepared to try and help, and you should not feel guilty for being unable to do the impossible.

Now, our work is like that.

We did not cause the problems that brought people into our care.

You Can’t Always Have The Answers

And sometimes, try as we might, we don't know enough to know how to put those problems right.

Sometimes there is just no way, but, as a society, we're learning all the time. What that means is that we don't know today what we will know tomorrow.

In my specialty of psychiatry, we've only really been going in any recognizable way for about a century.

We've got so much to learn.

We do not know how to do everything.

And if I fail to meet somebody else's arbitrary deadline, someone who probably has absolutely no understanding of the task involved, of its complexities, or of the time it's likely to take if, indeed, it's possible to achieve, I do not need to feel guilty.

And neither do you.

Conclusion

So please remember this:

You did not cause the problems that brought people into your care, you tried to help.

And sometimes you won't be able to.

That's not a feeling on your part.

That's the reality of nursing.

And to a larger extent, the reality of the human condition.

My name's Stuart Sorensen, I'm a mental health Nurse and trainer, thank you for watching.