I don't know it it's because we had a big going away party for one of my best nursing school friends last night, or if it's the color of my scrubs or what, but seemingly all the patients I've talked to today have chosen to unload their crushing emotional pain on me.

Normally I don't mind and can sometimes even help,  and I get it that I am helping just by offering a kind ear and some healing touch, wiping tears, that kind of thing....

But I started my shift already mentally fatigued, and everywhere I turn people are telling me that they want to die and hate their lives and have SO MUCH emotional baggage that I just don't feel equipped to deal with. It's like we've got a department full of trauma patients, but instead of broken bones, they've got broken lives. And how am I supposed to be therapeutic at all in an emergency department where I've only got 7 minutes until the next quasi-crisis erupts. I hate feeling like I'm giving them the same rushed lines that they get every time they come in to the ED or walk in clinic.... But I feel stuck.

And then there's the emotional exhaustion where I think.... PLEASE stop crying and unloading your life on me. I just don't have the strength to carry both of us. My heart aches for you, and I just want to save you, but I can't fix all your problems in a 2 hour stay in Emergency.

Sometimes I know the right thing to say, but a lot of the time I'm thinking..... O fuck. I can't think of a single thing. So I hold hands, I rub shoulders, I sit/stand in silence, I look compassionate.

Help me, emergency nurses!!! I need to learn how to let this stuff roll off me, or I feel like I am never going to make it in this specialty.