Thirty-minute Break
Two nurses show the importance of self-care in an industry faced with limited food options and time constraints
By Allayana Darrow
A handful of almonds sit in her pocket. She sips ice water instead of coffee. Therese O’Donnell is armed with her snacks for the night. For the next 12 hours, she’ll have two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute lunch.
The cafeteria is closed overnight. Constant coffee-guzzling doesn’t keep her awake and she knows she wouldn’t be able fall asleep once she got home. She makes a list of meals for the week, at a patient’s bedside, to make sure she stays hydrated and healthy.
Nursing is rewarding. However, nurse burnout — extreme fatigue, failure to engage with others and leaving the profession after just a few years — has been recorded at rates as high as 70 percent. Therese would rather see nurses armed with the resources to advocate for themselves (and a pocket full of almonds) than compromise their health and “become detrimental to their own practice.”
About seven years ago, Therese started living by the motto, “a failure to plan is a plan to fail.” One of her first jobs, right out of nursing school, was on the ICU night shift — 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. — where she learned to keep sustenance in close reach.
The first thing her mom, a direct care nurse of 23 years, told her when she was about to start working as a nurse was to take her breaks, eat her meals and to practice self-care. Ten years later, Therese teaches the same tools to students at Linfield School of Nursing where she is an adjunct clinical faculty member.
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Studies show that the environments in which nurses work can trigger eating disorders, weight gain, weight loss and other physiological and psychological effects. Majority of nurses who responded to a study done by the American Nurses Association had a body mass index that classifies them as overweight.
More than half of nurses don’t have access to fruits and vegetables at work.
Therese, like many hospital staff, would reach for fried chicken, French Fries or a cupcake on a particularly stressful day.
Over the course of her career, Therese and other nursing representatives have seen hospitals take initiative to provide their staff with healthier options like salad bars, fruit baskets and clean, protein-packed meals.
It wasn’t until Therese started working in the hospital that she prioritized her health as part of her job.
“If you don’t take care of yourself first, it’s hard to take care of patients in a thorough manner,” she said.
Once she cracked down on eating better and developed an exercise routine, she lost weight and gained energy she could then put toward her patients.
Therese managed her diet for working the night shift — only eating the cafeteria fruits and vegetables as a last resort, if it was open. Most of what she remembers from her ICU years was packaged and not fresh.
Day-shift nurses face a different set of challenges, like back-to-back surgeries and higher patient traffic.
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Ginger Darner steps out of the operating room, wondering about the patient she left on the operating table and her teammates who she knows are stretched thin. She wonders if the surgery will be a success, or if her absence will lead to a fatal error. A national shortage of healthcare professionals means a bare-bones crew is normal at many hospitals.
Ginger, a registered nurse in the operating room at Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, Oregon, can plow through her lunch in about 22 minutes when she has to buy something from the cafeteria.
After a 12, 10 or 8-hour shift, her legs are jelly. It’s difficult to work meal-prepping into her daily routine.
There may only be 15 nurses in her department on a busy day — the minimum requirement. Each of those nurses is running around gathering supplies, documenting every action in real time, maintaining patient safety and keeping the operating field sterile at the same time.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s not safe patient care,” she said.
Even when vending machines filled with candy and chips are replaced with healthy snacks, finding, paying for and eating a good meal in 30 minutes is a sprint to get back to work.
Lunch and rest breaks are supposed to be uninterrupted, according to nursing staffing laws. Still, that 30 minutes of unpaid “me time” is almost guaranteed to be interrupted by an emergency or cut in half because of transit time between the nurse’s station and the food court.
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“In those high-stress environments, we tend to reach for things that make us feel good and feel comforted,” Therese said.
That goes beyond greasy foods. The American Nurses Association suggests that up to 10 percent of registered nurses may be dependent on drugs or alcohol, about two percent higher than estimates of the public.
An aging baby-boomer population is contributing to an expected 15 percent increase in the number of registered nurses in the next seven years. Older populations generally require more direct healthcare and regular surgeries.
Therese’s best advice to incoming healthcare professionals is to self-reflect, plan ahead, manage nutrition and stay hydrated. Some nurses get so busy they forget to take a sip of water or go to the bathroom.
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Nurses give, give and give. Replenishing the mind, body and spirit with a daily check-in, a game-plan for a shift and healthy foods in close reach, has kept Therese in the healthcare profession for more than 10 years.
“In the times that we live in, our attention is being pulled in every direction,” she said. Between our phones, our jobs and our personal lives, it’s difficult to leave time for self-awareness.
Therese repeats her mother’s advice to students, hoping it will improve their professional experience and the quality of patient care.
Take your rest breaks. Set a reminder to go to the bathroom. Take a drink of water every 30 minutes. Bring your own lunch.
Take care of yourself, she tells them.