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Burnout is a term every nurse has heard, but it takes on a whole new meaning when you’re in the rigorous journey of CRNA school. The demands of clinical rotations, challenging coursework, and personal life responsibilities can leave even the most driven future CRNAs feeling overwhelmed and emotionally drained. Recognizing the signs of burnout and learning how to address it effectively are critical for long-term success, not only in your journey to becoming a CRNA but also in your nursing career.
In this episode, we’re diving deep into the topic of burnout with Dr. Lendra James, a distinguished healthcare leader and expert in burnout prevention. With over two decades of nursing experience, Dr. James brings invaluable insights into the root causes of burnout, its impact on nurses, and practical strategies for recovery. As the founder of DL James Consulting, she has dedicated her career to empowering healthcare professionals to prioritize their well-being, build resilience, and thrive in both their personal and professional lives.
Whether you’re already navigating CRNA school or preparing to start this transformative chapter, this conversation is packed with actionable tips and tools to help you prevent burnout, regain balance, and approach your CRNA journey with renewed energy and focus. Let’s get started!
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Dealing With Burnout Featuring Expert Coach Dr. Lendra James
Welcome back to the show Future CRNA. I’m your host, Jenny Fennell, CRNA and founder of CRNA School Prep Academy. And today we’re going to talk about burnout. Do you have a game plan on how you’re going to handle burnout throughout your CRNA journey?
I’m excited to announce we’re bringing on a guest host on the show, Dr. Lendra James, who is a distinguished healthcare leader, and nurse expert entrepreneur with over two decades of nursing experience. As the founder of DL James Consulting, Dr. James leverages her extensive knowledge to offer healthcare consulting, mentorship, and coaching services. She is a sought after speaker, renowned for her compelling talks on healthcare, entrepreneurship, leadership, and diversity.
She also is the host of the podcast Nurses with Voices, which shares inspiring conversations and provides guidance to the nursing community, and she’s an accomplished author addressing critical issues such as conscious and unconscious bias in healthcare.
Her mission is to inspire healthcare professionals and women to take charge of their health, wellness, and professional journeys, empowering them to pursue their entrepreneurial passions while prioritizing their well-being. And she is also a specialist in handling and coaching through burnout. I’m so excited to dive into this conversation with Dr. Lendra James. We are both passionate about this topic, so let’s go ahead and get into today’s episode.
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Thank you, Lendra for joining us on today’s show. We’re so excited to touch on this topic of burnout today. I would love for you to start off by sharing your background and how you got into what you’re doing now, which is coaching.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s always such a pleasure to speak with you. It really is. So my background, I’ve been a nurse for over 22 years, I’ve worked across the country, have done travel nursing, worked my way up to nursing leadership, achieved my doctor of nursing practice degree. It was during my time in leadership that I experienced a transformative shift in my purpose.
Nurse Burnout And Stress In Healthcare Workers
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the pressing need for self-care, wellness promotion, and preventative education within communities. And just witnessing the strain on hospital resources and the lack of attention to staff wellbeing, I chose to redirect my focus towards a greater mission, which was self-care advocacy.
My vision really became to create a lasting legacy that ensures widespread access to self-care, wellness and preventative health education. That, and just really recognizing that I was intrigued by the business side of healthcare. I embarked on a new chapter, which was entrepreneurship, and I launched my own company leveraging my leadership skills, my certification as a nurse executive and my doctor of nursing practice degree.
I empowered myself first and foremost, and I now empower other nurses and healthcare professionals to break through from burnout and build generational wealth. I do this through courses, through mentorship and events, like an event I was just telling you about; we hosted the Health and Wealth Expo, say live summit, that was in October.
I empower nurses and healthcare professionals to follow their entrepreneur aspirations, prioritize self-care, and I’ve discovered profound fulfillment in guiding others toward optimal wellness, especially being someone who has dealt with burnout herself.
Yes. Oh my gosh, I can resonate with everything you just said and I love it. Your passion comes through in your voice. I’m so excited to touch on this topic of burnout because a lot of the nurses that are listening are currently in it or have experienced it, and they’re probably getting ready for round two with CRNA school approaching. I would love to start touching on the topic with, what are some negative consequences that are caused by burnout?
What Are The Effects Of Burnout?
Burnout has a ripple effect. It impacts nearly every area of our life. When you’re burnt out, you stop pursuing things that once brought you joy. So nursing, for instance, it may be that you choose to no longer pursue CRNA school, which we don’t want you to do. We want you to get help so that you can stay focused. It can really cause you to not pursue those things that bring you joy.
Also, burnout can be personal or professional. I’ve seen so many talented nurses who put their dreams, their careers and their aspirations on hold simply due to exhaustion. That saddens me. It really does. It’s not just about career stagnation either, right? Burnout takes a toll on your self-care.
For nurses who are natural caregivers, we often forget to pour into ourselves. In my own journey, I realized how the lack of self-care led to a deeper feeling of depletion. And let’s not forget the wealth creation, but when you’re too burnt out to think clearly, let alone take on new challenges, you miss the opportunities. You miss opportunities to just really build wealth.
I know I keep bringing everything back to building wealth, and that’s just something personal to me. But it’s not only just about that, it’s that you miss the opportunity to take hold of opportunities that can really propel your future, whether it’s your career or your personal life. So I frequently talk about burnout to breakthroughs because it’s a critical conversation that we need to have in the healthcare industry.
Yes, I one hundred percent agree, and I think you end up finding yourself in a place of fear. When you’re stuck in burnout, fear just seems so overwhelming that you don’t want to risk the potential bad outcome. So it leaves you kind of stuck and stagnant where when you cope with burnout, when you address the reasons for the burnout, it allows you to say, you know what? I’m going to take a chance on myself.
By far, hands down, the best investment any of you listeners can make is taking a chance on yourself and not being afraid of the bad outcomes, knowing that even if something weren’t to turn out the way you hope, there’s always tomorrow. There’s always next year. You just pick yourself back up, lean on your support system and you keep going at it.
The thing that I see often happens too is the more you put things off, the less likely it is for you to ever follow through. It’s because you kill that passion. You tell yourself it’s okay to just put it off. Even though internally it’s not, and then what I see happen is five or six years later, I see a lot of regret. I see a lot of, as you spoke about people missing out on opportunities that could have been, well now they’re in an even harder position to overcome that because now time has passed.
Maybe they have a new life experience. Maybe now they have kids or maybe they have a mortgage. Maybe it would’ve actually been easier if they just would’ve taken the chance five years ago, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it because of this massive burnout. It was hard for them to take that opportunity when it was there.
Nurse Burnout: Nurses are natural caregivers, but if we forget to pour into ourselves, the lack of self-care can lead to a deep feeling of depletion.
Right? Because life is going to happen, right? Life is going to keep lifeing, and we have to be prepared for what that looks like. We have to be prepared for whatever type of impact that we want to have, or however we are impacted by our decisions. We have to be prepared for that.
Eliminating The Stigma Of Burnout
This is why it’s so important to really be able to recognize and identify- I’m exhausted, why? You know what? I’m burned out. Why? Because burnout, and someone actually mentioned this on a LinkedIn message, they said, “burnout has had such a bad stigma in the last few years, and now people are starting to really recognize it as an issue.” And that’s good.
It’s through conversations like this that people are recognizing and it’s okay, because it was almost like a healthcare professional couldn’t say that they were burned out. Why? If that’s what it is, we need to be able to recognize it and say, “I’m exhausted.” Because it really comes up in different ways. It manifests itself differently, and we need to be able to recognize it.
It’s almost like this old stigma of it’s just the expectation that when you do something hard, you’ll experience burnout. It’s like, no, no, we need to kill that. It should not be the expectation. You should be able to receive support through that. You should not have to live your life feeling that way every day.
You mentioned wealth, and a lot of people pursuing CRNA school are doing it because of the economic gains. However, there is so much more to it than that as far as the lifestyle to be able to have more. I personally did it. Obviously the money was a big draw, but I knew I wanted to have a family.
I knew I didn’t want to have to be missing every holiday working on nights and missing important events with my children. It did provide me that better lifestyle and work-life balance, as you call it. And by the way, it should be life-work balance, not the other way around, because you’re human first, work’s always second to that. So that should be adopted. We should flip that thing around.
I like that. No, you’re right. Life-work balance. I love it. I’m going to adopt that, just so you know.
Yes, okay. The more people that say it, hopefully it becomes the new norm, and maybe our employers can actually pay attention to that. It really shouldn’t be about work. It should be about life and then work.
I would love to hear, you kind of already mentioned some of the causes of burnout, but I’d love to get more into how can the nurses listening identify, what could be triggers of burnout?
What Causes Burnout?
There are so many contributing factors that can cause burnout, but in healthcare, it’s often a mix of being overworked, underappreciated, and facing systemic bias. Nurses and healthcare workers are constantly giving, but if you’re only giving and you’re not receiving any support or any recognition in return, the mental and emotional toll, it becomes overwhelming.
For me, the constant pressure to lead, to meet demands and push through systemic bias, it nearly broke me. And on top of that, the lack of control and autonomy in our roles is a huge trigger. It feels like you’re stuck in a system that doesn’t allow you to grow or worse, it doesn’t care for your well-being.
When you’re dealing with those type of issues, you have to be able to say, hold up. Wait a minute, this is not a part of, this is not how I perform ethically. This is not how I perform morally. And you know what? If I’m in a situation where I feel that my concerns or my needs are not being fulfilled; that’s where that appreciation comes in, and where that recognition comes in.
You’d be surprised how far a thank you goes or how far it goes if someone just sits down to have a conversation with you. I can remember being in leadership, being at the seat of the table and recognizing that we’re working with those who’ve never worked a clinical day in their lives, but they’re who are making certain decisions. So we really need to be able to pull from the front lines.
I would take some of my staff members with me to executive meetings so that they could hear the conversations that were had because they needed that input. The leadership table would actually appreciate when I would bring them with me; if it was my charge nurse or even some of my ANMs, I would bring them with me to certain meetings because we needed their input.
Making Your Voice Heard As A Burnt Out Nurse
That way, not only do they feel involved, but their voices are making a difference; otherwise, you’re just going to have a tribe of nurses who are working in an environment where they don’t feel like their voices are being heard. They’re working, they’re exhausted, and they don’t feel like they can see the fruits of their labor.
I love that. And the lack of control, that’s a huge piece. Not being able to feel like you have an avenue to change that. The way it relates to being in CRNA school is maybe you feel overwhelmed with the immense amount of pressure it is to perform in clinical, when you really have no idea what you’re doing, you’re just learning.
I think it kind of takes the role that sometimes you have to learn how to be resourceful and advocate for yourself to demand more support, to demand, “Hey, I don’t understand that concept. Is there a study group that I can go to? Can we form a study group that we can maybe have together to unravel this?”
Or if you go to your clinical mentor, your clinical preceptor and say, “Hey, we talked about this yesterday. I would love to dive into more detail the next time I’m with you so I can have a better understanding of how I can perform better.” Taking the kind of initiative like that can really give you that control to take your support and your needs to the next level.
I think so many of us are so used to just keeping quiet and minding our own. Some toxic people would say, “Stay in your lane.” No, no, no, no. You need to drive where you want to go. If that means in the opposite lane, you go in that opposite lane, take charge of being able to do this for yourself.
I completely, completely agree. I mean, you said it beautifully. I can’t see it any other way. You have to take charge. And that’s a part of advocacy, right? In the beginning, I talked about self-care and self-care advocacy. So even with my wellness business, it really started because of self-care, right?
That’s what you’re doing when you advocate for yourself. You’re advocating for your own well-being and for your own self-care. We have to be able to recognize those and bridge the gap between them.
Yes, and then sometimes, at least in my own experience, which is actually kind of scary to not even realize you have burnout. I think we probably all could laugh about it now if we’ve kind of overcome it, but sometimes you’re like, well, shoot, I didn’t even know I was experiencing it.
That's what you're doing when you advocate for yourself. You're advocating for your own well-being and for your own self-care. Share on XLike what we mentioned before, sometimes it’s almost like the expectation that when things are going to be hard, you just kind of say, “Well, I feel miserable, but I guess I’m supposed to feel miserable.” So how can our listeners identify if they truly are experiencing burnout?
Signs And Symptoms Of Burnout
You know what? That’s a great question. Like you said, sometimes we believe that, because we’ve worked 60 to 70 hours this week, that means you’re working hard. No, your body isn’t meant to work that way. We’ve been programmed to believe that’s a badge of honor, and it’s not. It’s really not.
When we talk about recognizing and being able to identify burnout, one of the key indicators is the feeling of detachment. You might start feeling disconnected from your work, from your colleagues, and even from your patient care. The patients that you’re caring for, you may start to feel disconnected from them.
I remember moments when I couldn’t muster up the passion that I once had for nursing, especially for nursing leadership as well. That was a big red flag for me. Other signs could be physical and emotional exhaustion that just doesn’t go away, even with rest. We should be resting getting at least seven to eight hours of sleep at night. sleep.
If we can’t, that inability to really feel rested, that’s another sign. If you wake up dreading your day, if you wake up and you’re on your way to work and you’re dreading going to work, again, you’re becoming emotionally distant from everything. Being able to recognize this, if you’re feeling this way, it’s likely that burnout is creeping in.
If you’re having difficulty focusing, irritability, a sense of hopelessness, these are clear signs that you’re exhausted, you’re tired, and you’re feeling burned out. In my coaching, I always encourage healthcare workers to really check in with themselves and check in with themselves regularly.
Don’t allow it to fester. Don’t allow burnout to really fester, don’t just ignore the signs and the symptoms because that’s what burnout is- a symptom. When we ignore it, we allow it to grow. And before you know it, we can’t function and we are not even recognizing ourselves.
Yes, and I really resonate with what you said. One thing I want to bring up that happened to me that was a big indicator, and it was probably me taking it too far, but the detachment piece, it actually happened to me. It was a weird thing to feel when you don’t even feel, you just feel empty as a person. It was hard to describe, but I remember feeling like, “What do I even want? Who am I? I don’t even care about anything.”
You feel completely just like whatever, and you don’t feel passionate anymore. You start even having resentment towards people who actually want to help you, who actually do love you. You start feeling resentment for them caring about you. That’s a huge red flag when you’re just like, “I don’t want you to ask me how my day was, or I don’t want you to talk about these hard things.” All they want to do is help.
That’s a huge sign that you’re dealing with burnout because you feel resentment towards the idea that you have an issue. And that’s, to me, kind of how mine unfolded a little bit. Another thing that you mentioned was putting up armor and protecting yourself by shielding yourself from being able to feel.
ICU Nurse Burnout
I remember reflecting on ICU nurses who were ICU nurses for a very long period of time. Some never did that. Some somehow figured out how to still be compassionate, empathetic, caring, and they were my idols. I’m like, “You are a rockstar. I don’t know how you do it because man, I’m barely doing it for a year, and I’m like a shell of a human. The more I feel, the more I hurt every day and it is destroying me.” I was crying all the time.
It was probably the only time I felt clinically depressed. I mean, it was such a hard time in my life to get through that ICU experience, to see death and suffering all the time. And then I’d also see ICU nurses who were very cold and very just disconnected from anything that could be going on. They don’t even care when something bad happens. They’re just like, “Yeah, it’s just part of what it is.”
To me, that is someone who just never worked through the burnout and just let it overcome them. I’m sure it probably affected their personal lives too, and that is what we want to try to avoid.
We experience trauma as healthcare professionals on a consistent basis. Think about it, think about how you have your patients, and you mentioned death and dying. So think about the patients who you were just in that room coding that patient for 30, 40 minutes and they expired. But then you have to walk right back into that other patient’s room and put on a smile.
We never get a chance a lot of times to really deal with our trauma. That’s traumatizing to the average person. Think about someone who saw someone getting hit by a car. Think about how traumatizing that could be. Some people may have to be in therapy for seeing something like that. We deal with this on an ongoing basis, but then we’re expected to just go to lunch, or then go right back to business as usual. We never deal with our trauma.
You’re right that most people would need some type of counseling or therapy if they physically saw someone die. But that’s part of our job. And I think unfortunately, it gets tied into the expectation, which really isn’t okay, we are still humans first, and we really should have time to cope and grieve with the things that we face day in, day out at work. But yet we don’t get that adequate time to grieve, to cope, to understand.
So those of you listening, do not be afraid to seek therapy. That should be an expectation. If you need it, receive it and pour into yourself so you can move forward in a human way, so you don’t let this kind of unfold in your personal and professional lives. I would also love to dive into how can we help our listeners work on starting to overcome the burnout and preventing such relapse of burnout?
How To Recover From Burnout
One of the first things you have to do is recognize it, right? You have to be able to recognize those symptoms that I mentioned. Well, those symptoms and recognize that that’s burnout, right? As I mentioned, burnout is a symptom, however, it comes along with and exacerbates the other symptoms that I mentioned. So we have to recognize it.
Overcoming burnout starts with recognizing it and then prioritizing yourself, something that I had to learn the hard way. For many nurses especially, this feels counterintuitive because we’re trained to care for others first, like we just mentioned. But it’s critical to set boundaries both at work and in your personal life. You have to set those boundaries and you have to learn to say no.
Nurse Burnout: Your purpose is what shapes you. You need to know why you’re doing this, you need to identify your purpose. That’s how you’re going to be able to overcome burnout.
I actually have a guide for your listeners that will go through the different things that we can do. You can look at exercises. There’s little things with even movement that you can do, taking 10 minutes a day or three to four times a week that you can do. But more than that, I work with nurses on mindfulness and mental wellness strategies and creating self-care routines, delegating responsibilities, taking time off when you need it, right? It can be life saving, what do they call ’em now? Mental health days.
Yeah, it’s actually a thing because it’s also crucial to reconnect with your, why did you choose this profession? Why are you a nurse in the first place? Why do you want to be a CRNA? It’s crucial to identify your why. Sometimes reigniting that passion can really remind you of your purpose.
Your purpose is what shapes you. You need to know why you’re doing this, you need to identify your purpose. That’s how you’re going to be able to overcome burnout. I’ve built my business around helping nurses break free from burnout, and I can tell you firsthand that finding support is key, right?
Whether it’s through therapy, whether it’s through mentorship, whether it’s through community or peer groups, you need to have a circle of people who understand you and understand what you’re going through so that they can help you with it, and they can provide guidance.
Breath of fresh air. Thank you so much for all of that. It’s funny, I have equally received support myself. I have experienced burnout multiple times in my life. One thing that stuck with me, instead of using the term “busy”, I now try to catch myself and instead of saying that, I try to say “I’m fulfilled.”
Just that simple little shift from “I’m so busy,” to instead saying, “I’m just so fulfilled.” It’s true. I am. I have five kids. I run two businesses. I am a CRNA still practicing, and I love it. I love it all, and I’m so grateful that I get to do it all. But it is a lot, right? So that fulfillment piece, instead of busy, is huge.
Preventing Burnout With Boundaries
Someone also taught me this other little trick, because I could not set boundaries; I’m like a yes person to my own fault, meaning I’ll say yes to you even if it takes something away from me or my family, for example. I had to really break that because it was eating into me and really causing some negative life consequences.
Now, when I have to question whether or not I say yes, the first thing I say is, “If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to?” Because every time you say yes, there’s only so many hours in the day, right? And you have to sleep for seven to eight of those. So when you say yes to this, what are you now saying no to?
Most of the time it’s saying no to self-care. I’m not going to go to the gym today. Instead, I’m going to spend an hour helping you, or I’m not going to spend time reading with my son tonight because I’m going to work a half hour later than I normally would. Then if you phrase it that way, you’re like, no, I need to read with my son, and that’s a priority.
I’m going to have to say, no, I can’t take that meeting. I’m sorry. I have to end my day at three o’clock. Sorry. It’s so much easier when you reframe it in your own mind of “What am I saying no to by saying yes to you?” It’s so much easier to say no. That’s a little trick that I use pretty frequently.
Good for you. That’s exactly right, that’s exactly what you need to understand, and that’s how you learn to set boundaries. You have to think about, if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to for myself? So, that’s perfect. That’s a perfect example. I love that. That’s what’s saying no means, and that’s what setting boundaries means.
I’m so glad you mentioned those because I think these are such key takeaways for our listeners, and I would love for you to share how our listeners can connect with you in a deeper way, follow you on all the platforms.
Oh, sure. So you can find me on LinkedIn where I readily share strategies on how to overcome burnout. My Mentorship Mondays and my newsletter you can find on LinkedIn. You can visit DL James Consulting, which is my website. That’s Dr. Lendra James Consulting. You can find me on my podcast, Nurses With Voices as well.
It is really all about giving nurses back their voice, right? I interview nurses and healthcare professionals who found innovative ways to just thrive in the industry. So for anyone interested in deeper coaching or wellness programs, again, you can visit my website, and of course you can join me on LinkedIn, my Burnout to Breakthroughs Network Alliance.
Yes, I highly recommend everyone listening out there, you need to be doing these things. It’s such a key part of your journey to becoming a CRNA. Thank you so much, Dr. James for joining us today. We appreciate you and I look forward to staying in touch.
Same here. Thank you so much for having me.
Important Links
Join the Free CSPA Community! Connect with a network of Aspiring CRNAs, Nurse Anesthesia Residents, practicing CRNAs and CRNA Program Faculty Mentors here: https://www.cspaedu.com/community
Get access to application & interview preparation resources plus ICU Educational Workshops that have helped thousands of nurses accelerate their CRNA success. Become a member of CRNA School Prep Academy: https://cspaedu.com/join
Get CRNA School insights sent straight to your inbox! Sign up for the CSPA email newsletter: https://www.cspaedu.com/podcast-email
Book a mock interview, resume or personal statement critique, transcript review and more: www.teachrn.com
Learn More about Dr. Lendra James: https://www.dljamesconsulting.com/
Free Download- A Nurse’s Guide to Breakthrough from Burnout: https://nurseswithvoices.kit.com/1bfc73104b
