Why Nurses Don’t Need Another Productivity Hack — They Need a Reset
There are moments in nursing that don’t leave you when the shift ends.
For me, those moments came most often during my time in labor and delivery, especially when I specialized in fetal demise. Being present with families on the worst day of their lives is a sacred privilege—but it is also a weight. I poured my heart and soul into that work. And while it was deeply meaningful, it took a real mental, emotional, and physical toll.
That’s the part people don’t always see.
Nurses aren’t burned out because they don’t care. We’re burned out because we care deeply—and we carry that care long after we clock out.
Why “just be more productive” misses the point
When nurses talk about exhaustion or burnout, the response is often some version of:
“What are you doing for self-care?”
“You need better work-life balance.”
“Try managing your time differently.”
And if I’m being honest, that kind of advice makes me internally roll my eyes.
Not because rest doesn’t matter—but because so much of the conversation around self-care has become deeply self-focused in a way that doesn’t align with how nurses are wired, or with what I believe to be true.
The world tells us we should always be the most important person in our own story. Scripture teaches something different. Our lives are not about us alone. Nursing, at its core, is a calling to care for others.
That doesn’t mean we pour ourselves out until we are completely empty and broken. But it does mean that productivity hacks and surface-level fixes will never be enough to sustain a life of service.
What nurses don’t need is another system to optimize themselves.
What we need is a way to reset how we carry the weight.
What a “reset” looked like for me
For me, reset didn’t mean pretending the shift wasn’t hard. It meant acknowledging it fully—and then intentionally not letting it follow me home.
After particularly heavy days, I wouldn’t rush out of the hospital. I would clock out and sit in my car. I would cry. I would scream. I would pray. I would let my husband know it had been a hard shift.
And when I was ready—not when the clock said so, but when I was ready—I would visualize taking the burden off my shoulders and setting it down at the entrance of the hospital.
If I wasn’t ready to do that yet, I didn’t leave.
That pause mattered.
It allowed work to stay at work. It didn’t bleed into my family life, my relationships, or my sense of who I was outside of nursing. I could still grieve, still process, still talk things through later—but the weight no longer owned me.
That was the reset.
Not productivity. Not efficiency. Presence. Release. Intention.
Where faith fits into all of this
I’ve been asked many times how I can do this kind of work and still remain joyful, resilient, and grounded.
The honest answer is this: it is not by my own strength.
Jesus is my strength. Full stop.
By human power alone, this kind of emotional resilience doesn’t hold. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Faith has been the foundation that allows me to experience hard things without letting them define me. I don’t deny anxiety, grief, or exhaustion—but I don’t let them become my identity.
That doesn’t mean I’ve never had hard moments. It means those moments don’t get the final word. It means I laid those moments at the foot of the cross and then left them there. I did not return to pick them back up.
Why I created the Nurse Reset Checklist
Over the years, I’ve listened to so many nurses—seasoned nurses and nursing students alike—express fear about entering or staying in this profession. They see the burnout. They hear the stories. They feel the weight before they’ve even fully stepped into it.
I realized that what I was doing mentally—resetting, releasing, grounding—I needed to translate into something tangible for others.
I created the Nurse Reset Checklist for the days when:
you’re coming off a bad shift and walking straight into another one
you feel burnout creeping in
you don’t want yesterday’s burden to spill into today
you don’t want to live anxiously five steps ahead of what hasn’t happened yet
It’s not about fixing nursing. It’s about helping nurses carry the calling without being crushed by it.
You are not alone in this
If you are a nurse who feels tired, heavy, or quietly worn down, I want you to know this:
You can still love this work.
You can still feel called to it.
And it is okay to need support along the way.
Being grounded doesn’t mean being untouched by hardship. It means being held steady through it.
If a gentle, practical reset would serve you, you can find the Nurse Reset Checklist or the Nurse’s Reflective Companion in the resources section. It’s there to support you—not to add another thing to your plate.
And if nothing else, I hope you leave this space feeling seen and reminded that you don’t have to carry everything alone.
