The Biggest Red Flag: Energy Drinks and Starbucks

    One of the biggest reasons for burnout is the long shift. To me, when I need to go to work at seven in the morning, the first two hours are to clear my mind, two hours to do my work, one and a half hours of rest, and another two hours of work, and for the rest of the time suppressing myself not to murder the client and the colleagues. Dall'Ora et al.'s article (2015) studies hospitals in Europe and suggests that after the long shift, nurses lack empathy, have trouble focusing on charts and documents, think about quitting, and can only maintain minimum politeness; shifts longer than 8 hours significantly damage the nurses' mental health as well. The clients or patients may receive reduced care in this scenario, and the chance of the facility making mistakes will increase drastically.
    Most care-taking organizations use long day and long night shifts to reduce the shift change required when providing care, which is somehow understandable. Shift change can be chaotic, and preferably, not a lot of clients or patients should be around or awake. Some facilities do shift change at 7:00 and 19:00 in a day, while others do at 4:00 and 16:00 in a day. Sometimes, I can see a lot of discarded Monster drinks and Red Bulls in the trashcan, and occasionally, I see workers come to the office with a Starbucks drink. If the workers can only rely on these drinks to keep them alert every day, this can be concerning. Trash never lies, and seeing this means that the workers do not often get time to rest during long shifts. If the facility cannot provide good care to the workers, then the workers cannot provide good care to the clients and patients. The quality of care can spiral down as the facility fails to profit because it fails to take care of people.
    What I dislike about the 12-hour shift is that the workers do not have much time before the next shift. Usually, they need to wake up again in only 10 hours so they can arrive at the next shift on time after their previous shifts. Ten hours sometimes is not enough for both the rest and the housework added up, especially when you need to have a long night shift after a long day shift. Sleeping in the morning can be challenging for light sleepers, and some people may inevitably stay awake for around 16 hrs. Vetbuje's article (2023) also suggests that the long shift prevents family reunion activities. For the younger generation, having a long shift probably means less time with friends, which serves similar functions as a family that provides a supportive network. The lack of proper rest can lead to many side effects: for me, not having enough rest and outdoor time means less energy and more Vitamin D supplements; the lack of sleep also makes people more vulnerable to transmissible diseases like the common cold, which potentially leads to more sick leaves (Medic et al., 2017). 
    I also do realize that even in Canada, the lack of funds is a common problem. I used to do my internship at CMHA Thame Valley, but even for them, during the COVID, they lost the funding for the building and had to shrink to a floor of the office. Similarly, in another homeless shelter where I volunteered, their basic facilities, like door handles and elevators, lack repair. The most significant cost for a caring facility is personnel, but without funding, there is nothing the workers can do to improve their quality of care. The lack of funding also means the workers can only do what they can with what they have, which means their autonomy and ideas will be limited, and such limitation can potentially damage the worker's satisfaction at work and lead to burnout (Guo et al., 2022). Even workers get their hands tied often, and they have the boundary of competency and need to work on the authorization process before they can employ their ideas; killing the idea before workers are capable of sharing is worse. If the workers are burned out, I see they are out of professionalism, too. Instead of being responsible for the clients and patients, worker's mentality changes to be responsible to the managers. They start to use inappropriate words in the caring field, like "crazy" or "insane." They are also having trouble keeping the heart under the sleeve. To me, other workers talking about their daily struggles is OK, but I do not know if that is OK when talking in front of clients or patients. I do not think long shifts can help the facility in the long run since the quality of care will significantly decrease, which will eventually reflect and damage the facility.

    What are some of the red flags you spotted at your previous workplace?  

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