Why Nursing Is Like a Contact Sport | Opinion

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a contact sport is one in which the impact of one person against another is an inherent part of the sport. Contact sports include boxing, football, ice hockey, lacrosse, martial arts, and wrestling.

Contact sports carry a high risk of injury and some people are advised not to take part in them. It is unwise for an injured person to participate in a contact sport until completely recovered like with concussions.

How Is Nursing Like A Contact Sport?

You might ask, “How is nursing a contact sport?”

Let me prove it to you.

• High Injury and Illness Rates: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, RNs have experienced the highest injury and illness rates in the healthcare and social assistance sector and the numbers are increasing with most injuries occurring in hospitals where about 60% of nurses work. There was an almost 300% increase in non-fatal workplace injuries from 2019 to 2020 resulting in at least one day away from work
• Violence: Violent events are 3 times higher than the rate of violent events for all occupations.
• Mental Health: Psychologically, 50% of nurses report feeling stressed, frustrated, exhausted or overwhelmed constantly. And, 56% are experiencing symptoms of burnout and emotional exhaustion.64% reported feeling a great deal of stress because of their job.
• Discrimination: According to RWJF’s survey, 8 out of 10 nurses have seen or experienced racism and discrimination from patients, and 6 out of 10 experiencing it from colleagues.

Nurses Are Not Protected

Harm in this profession comes from equipment, policies, practices, protocols, and from people. We’ve heard about sick buildings. How about sick systems in healthcare? In other words, the system that we operate in as professionals and patients is making us sick and even more vulnerable and exposed than ever before.

The contact sport of nursing entails wearing flimsy layers of fabric with scrubs and professional wear with no pads, helmets, braces, or cups.

Being human, we have numerous holes and entry points that don’t protect our ears, eyes, heads, torsos, limbs, or hearts. We are exposed to physical and psychological jabs all day long role switching from being the abused or the abuser.

Worst of all, certainly our hearts are not protected from the hurts that come from people and places that we least expect. Sometimes coming from people who should understand your struggle because of a shared racial background.

It also doesn’t protect our heads from processing things that don’t make sense, the foolishness that we have to deal with, and the things that make us revisit our whys.

How To Protect Yourself As A Nurse

So how do we protect ourselves better? One answer is to not run. But to stand tall like bison and fight to make it better for ourselves, for others, and for those who will come after we are long gone.

Doing things differently is more important today than doing different things.

The professional stoicism that we wear each day that we show up hoping for something better, also entails us making room for the emotions that we have always said don’t belong in the professional setting.

After all, we are human beings, not human doings.

Emotions Have To Go Somewhere

There is a story of medical students who were learning procedures on the torsos of cadavers offered by Don Berwick. The professor warned the students that this may be tough and that they needed to check in as often as they wanted to make sure that they were ok.

They had counselors on hand just in case they were needed. Hours passed, and no calls for support or counseling. Students kept dissecting these human torsos like it was just another day in the office. A couple more hours went by until one student turned over a torso to access kidneys and then she saw something she didn’t expect to see. A colorful bandaid covering a large pimple. On the cadaver. Then it hit her. This cadaver was once a human being - a person who used a bandaid on a small wound not knowing they were going to die that day.

Everyone started crying. This “thing” that was teaching material was at one point a “being”. We are beings and we must allow ourselves to feel.

The pent-up emotions finally had somewhere to go.

We have been taught to tough it out in healthcare but I submit to you that all your emotions belong here. Acknowledging and addressing your feelings is strength. It is armor. It is protective gear.

Fear belongs here. Frustration belongs here. Anger belongs here. Love belongs here. Warmth belongs here. Joy belongs here. Bring it all here. It’s time.

Acknowledging this is power. Band-Aid power. Feel what happens—feel what we intend—feel what we can try—not because of a number, or pay for performance, or a report card, or a market. We must harness power this is totally different, which is a far, far better sort. It will lead us to do not what we must, but what we should.

Cynics get stuck. The fearful don’t move. The hopeless won't budge. Put down our cynicism. Put down our fear. Put down any hopelessness.

How To Brace For Contact

How do we brace for contact? Pick up hope, knowledge, and trust in what you can do, and in what you can learn to do, as long as we do it together. Do the thing you think you cannot do. Which is to love yourself and base decisions for yourself and those around you based on that love. The late Rev Martin Luther King said, "I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world.”

Go to your appointments. Seek help when needed. Love on yourself. Make time for family and friends. Hold people accountable who hurt you and we must remember, well-being is a team sport. Black nurses, your silence serves no one- as a matter of fact, they are counting on it.

Speak truth to power and let the chips fall where they may. Best-selling author, Luvvi Ajayi Jones says you must consider 3 things before we speak truth to power - do you believe it, can you defend it, can you say it with love?