Nursing Conflicts
A Genially using my branching decision tree model tool to connect struggling nurses with stories to relate and help solve professional and interpersonal conflicts.
INTRODUCTION
My goal with this project is to connect nurses to real stories that readily aid in the conflicts they are dealing with in their working lives. Nursing can feel like an isolating field, where other careers do not face or understand the daily conflicts of a nurse. I'd like to connect you with solutions to your problems you may be facing both from within your profession and outside perspectives.
You and Your Career
Report and Review
Early Career Nursing
Late Career Nursing
Early Career Conflicts/Reality Shock/Option 1
Combating Reality Shock and Transitional Shock
Several people reduce shock by changing how they do their job rather than quitting outright. Such as In a city planner's story, she deliberately accepts that she can “only win incrementally,” which lowers her expectation of total control and makes compromise part of the job, not a personal failure.
Early Career Conflicts/Reality Shock/Option 2
A minister reframes painful conflicts and losses as part of a lifelong calling, which keeps him from seeing everything as meaningless even in burnout
Combating Reality Shock and Transitional Shock
Shock often comes from feeling your daily actions no longer match your values. People who cope best consciously reconnect work to something they care about.
In a story of a social worker, they are able to stay despite a hostile system by focusing on individual clients and small wins, not on “fixing” the whole system.
Early Career Conflicts/Reality Shock/Option 3
Combating Reality Shock and Transitional Shock
Some late‑career people decide the problem isn’t just expectations—it’s the fit. They reduce shock by changing careers or carving a new path.
A web content producer walks away from a “star” job at an online magazine to build her own studio, accepting chaos and risk to regain control and creative freedom. In nursing, this could mean a relocation or a change of specialty!
Early Career Conflicts/Time Management/Option 1
Time Managment
The inability to manage time or prioritize in a work setting can be very difficult for early career nurses. This creates a lot of constant anxiety as an inability to manage time and resources becomes clear.
A writer struggling to manage school, work and appointments breaks fown their work into much smaller goals, and plan by breaking things into a top 3 list of priorities.This kind of skill comes with time in a career and develops slowly, but a mindset of purposeful intention around ones actions limits anxiety.
Early Career Conflicts/Time Management/Option 2
Time Management
Other than just learning to prioritize your tasks there is also benefitng from those around you. In the case of a Student Athlete we see them struggling between being a Division 1 basetball player, and his challenging classes, such as chemistry. We see this student athlete use some of the same skills used by the writer in our first option, but notably, the student athlete used his peers help.
He turned to his peers and classmates, and importantly his fellow atheletes how they were doing well in school and in their sports. Asking your peers for direct help along with advice is a great way to learn how to better manage your responsibilties.
Early Career Conflicts/Making Mistakes/Option 1
Making Mistakes
Making mistakes, and the fear of making mistakes is a common worry for early career nurses. Being a nurse is a high stakes job and can lead nurses to replay their shifts in the minds at night, check charts at home, and stress impacting their sleep, only increasing the concern of ones ability to operate during their waking hours. An air-force general says that the best way to learn from mistakes is to by taking responsibility for your actions, allowing yourself to learn and get direct feedback, and makew better informed decisions in the future.
Early Career Conflicts/Making Mistakes/Option 2
Making Mistakes
Interacting with others in your field can be challenging, especially with patients and those who may be less understanding of where you're coming from. A social worker explained to us how they handled mistakes by reflecting on interactions, improving empathy, and building stronger relationships with clients over time. Reflecting on the experiences you've had, positive or negatitive may allow you avoid making such mistakes in the future, or even handling the consequences of those mistakes easier.
Early Career Conflicts/Confidence And Communication
Confidence And Communication
A lot of early career nurses struggle to speak up to those in their workplace, such as physicians, senior nurses and families.
A nurse, later in her career writes about how confidence in your own abilities allows you to better communicate with others. Allowing her to communicate calmly and clearly in high pressure, even life or death situations. A journalist was able to learn not only how to communicate, but asking the right questions and listening closely to those answering allowed more information to be shared easier.
Early Career Conflicts/Emotional Turmoil
Emotional Turmoil & Impact
It can be extremeley difficult as a nurse to come into contact with death, suffering, aggression and grief, especially for the first time, or as a new struggle. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. A homicide detective, and a social worker share in the advice of creating emotional boundaries, where what you expierence at work is not personal to them nor a reflection on themselves. They are a bystandar and servant to those they are helping and caring for, it is not a personal grievance but that of the job you are experiencing.
NOT TO BE USEDSPACER EARLY/LATE
Early Career Conflicts/Physical Wear and Tear 1
Physical Wear & Tear
As a nurse you have spent your entire career on your feet, readily helping patients at near break neck speed and demand. It can and has taken a toll on your physical wellbeing. A labor support doula writes about hwo they handled physical wear and tear over long unpredicatable hours. They talk themselves about learning to conserve energy over long hours and understanding the demands placed on them, and how with proper boundary setting and support they were able to manage this physical strain.
Early Career Conflicts/Physical Wear and Tear 2
Physical Wear & Tear
Not just those who work in health fields experience this kind of physical demand. We see an air force general who puts specific time and effort to keep his body at peak condition to manage the demands put on him. Focusing endurance and dscipline to manage his physical health and wellness. We see a combination here of knowing what's ahead and how to better support your work as well as supporting the vessel you need to do your work through, as is the case with the air force general.
Early Career Conflicts/Burnout
Once you are able to build those boundaries, keeping them consistent under repetitive tests of stress, not just a singular moment, is crucial. Adaptation, and adapting to your work and it's stresses is the last and ultimate skill. Knowing when to change your mindsets and doing so when appropriate without losing the boundaries you've placed is the last skill gleamed from these professionals.
Burnout
Almost all career professionals who have shared their experiences in the workforce share ones about overcoming, or falling to burnout. I could simply make the entire project just about this topic, so I'd like to talk about the key take away from many stories, from nurses, social workers, homicide detective, personal injury lawyers, advertising executives and more... Creating emotional boundaries, which help you to not absorb the stress of your enviroment into yourself. Understanding how to conserve energy in your position and manage your workload reasonably.
Early Career Conflicts/System&Technology Changes
System and Tech Changes
There is nothing more upsetting then having your job down to a pattern. Charting and processing patient information is finally one stress you do not think about, all you have to do is focus on your work. Then even that all changes. Systems and technology changing is something many careers have to face, it disrupts workflow and adds what can feel like an unnessecary stress to an already stressed work enviroment. A College proffessor states that he felt simularly frustrated, but with a mindset of change was able to adapt his work and how he conducted his work to better fit the new tools given to him.
Early Career Conflicts/System&Technology Changes 2
System and Tech Changes
Adaptabilitity can be a life saver but that is not all there is to change. In order to adapt to a new system you must give yourself grace that you will struggle and have to relearn. It's simular to learning to ride a bike and then the entire bike changes beneath your feet, you may crash, and that's ok. A pharmacutical sales executive felt simularly. They struggled with the new technology changes, and had to slow down. They had to really take the time to break down each piece of the new system and understand it before they were able to apply it to their work. This kind of patience for yourself is a muscle you probably don't have to excersize much at this point in your career, but just like learning any new skill you have to be ready to just be decent at it for a while before you'll be a master.
Early Career Conflicts/Leadership Burden
This is where that boundary setting comes into place. We see the airforce general able to understand the limit of his power as a person in a leadership role. He can't directly control those he directs, and all he can do is share his knowledge from his experience but allowing those below you to make mistakes on their own behalf and learn, as you did.
Leadership Burden
As a nurse with your experience you are either looked up to by your tenorship alone or you've taken a role as a charge nurse, a preceptor or a mentor in some capacity. It can be a lot of stress put onto you. You are accountable for others and their actions, as well as an entire job of mentoring and making decisions for others. There is a ton of conflict resolution skills needed for this job at this level.
Early Career Conflicts/Moral Distress
Moral Distress
This problem is unique to only late career nurses and comes just from knowing what quality care is, and knowing when your lack of resources, annoying insurance policies and limited staffing are impacting that care. This can create moral injury and stress to nurses. Other late career nurses are able to continue to provide the best care they possibily can in the circumstances they're in. Knowing they can't contorl their surroundings, and doing the best work they can anyways. If your boundaries fall and you become overwhelmed and anxious the circumstances can overwhelm your ability to work.
FINAL Report
Research Question
My work this semester was to investigate the turmoils of nurses in the U.S, and to see if there was a connection between the conflicts nurses face in their early and late careers; how those conflicts differ, and if other career stories can help and aid those in these circumstances.
I have a page dedicated later in this tool to my work cited where all the information that is "assumed" in this tool, such as common struggles in nurses, is researched, defined and backed up. I also used the perplexitity library shared with me by Dr. Leland Hartwell to pull these struggles from stories, to see which out of the many career stories provided touched on the conflicts I saw nurses struggle with. If I had more time I would have liked to talked to real nurses, to make sure my research was broad enough to truly answer the questions nurses need answering.
FINAL Report 2
To answer my question...
I wanted to start first in the career struggles of nurses. I learned nursing as a field is a heavily researched field and a lot of the work of interviewing and monitoring nurses at all career levels has been done for me. So, my goal was to meta-anaylze the research done to discern the top 5 conflicts early, and the top 5 conflicts late career nurses face.
The resilience a nurse is required to have to succeed long term in their careers is incredible. Both mental and physical fortitude is a must for nurses, or they simply will not be able to handle the intense personal stress of the position. As they get older intense physical care is required as well, after decades of an extremeley physically demanding job they have to be ready to care for their bodies in order to keep working at the efficancy expected of them. I also learned I love research. Alongside this internship I am also a researcher for ACE, Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, and as I compiled and researched for both of these amazing opprountinues I realized I am much more excited and capable at research, than I would be as a nurse.
FINAL Report 3
What I learned and how my Views Changed...
At the begining of this term I was considering a future career in nursing. A college local to me offers a postbacc program to become a registered nurse. This felt like something that could be fitting for me. I enjoy serving the public, and helping people learn about their health. This project revealed a lot of challenges I could never have predicted for nurses both young and old.
Work Cited
FINAL Report 4
Thank you
A I appreciated the opprutinity to develop my own research and work under someone I was able to readily ask questions to as I went along. It was a wonderful expierence and has given me a lot of confidence to work on something over an entire term and have it come to a product I am proud of at the end. So thank you, and thank you for reading my research.
Nursing Conflicts
Rayanne Dietz
Created on February 21, 2026
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Transcript
Nursing Conflicts
A Genially using my branching decision tree model tool to connect struggling nurses with stories to relate and help solve professional and interpersonal conflicts.
INTRODUCTION
My goal with this project is to connect nurses to real stories that readily aid in the conflicts they are dealing with in their working lives. Nursing can feel like an isolating field, where other careers do not face or understand the daily conflicts of a nurse. I'd like to connect you with solutions to your problems you may be facing both from within your profession and outside perspectives.
You and Your Career
Report and Review
Early Career Nursing
Late Career Nursing
Early Career Conflicts/Reality Shock/Option 1
Combating Reality Shock and Transitional Shock
Several people reduce shock by changing how they do their job rather than quitting outright. Such as In a city planner's story, she deliberately accepts that she can “only win incrementally,” which lowers her expectation of total control and makes compromise part of the job, not a personal failure.
Early Career Conflicts/Reality Shock/Option 2
A minister reframes painful conflicts and losses as part of a lifelong calling, which keeps him from seeing everything as meaningless even in burnout
Combating Reality Shock and Transitional Shock
Shock often comes from feeling your daily actions no longer match your values. People who cope best consciously reconnect work to something they care about. In a story of a social worker, they are able to stay despite a hostile system by focusing on individual clients and small wins, not on “fixing” the whole system.
Early Career Conflicts/Reality Shock/Option 3
Combating Reality Shock and Transitional Shock
Some late‑career people decide the problem isn’t just expectations—it’s the fit. They reduce shock by changing careers or carving a new path. A web content producer walks away from a “star” job at an online magazine to build her own studio, accepting chaos and risk to regain control and creative freedom. In nursing, this could mean a relocation or a change of specialty!
Early Career Conflicts/Time Management/Option 1
Time Managment
The inability to manage time or prioritize in a work setting can be very difficult for early career nurses. This creates a lot of constant anxiety as an inability to manage time and resources becomes clear.
A writer struggling to manage school, work and appointments breaks fown their work into much smaller goals, and plan by breaking things into a top 3 list of priorities.This kind of skill comes with time in a career and develops slowly, but a mindset of purposeful intention around ones actions limits anxiety.
Early Career Conflicts/Time Management/Option 2
Time Management
Other than just learning to prioritize your tasks there is also benefitng from those around you. In the case of a Student Athlete we see them struggling between being a Division 1 basetball player, and his challenging classes, such as chemistry. We see this student athlete use some of the same skills used by the writer in our first option, but notably, the student athlete used his peers help.
He turned to his peers and classmates, and importantly his fellow atheletes how they were doing well in school and in their sports. Asking your peers for direct help along with advice is a great way to learn how to better manage your responsibilties.
Early Career Conflicts/Making Mistakes/Option 1
Making Mistakes
Making mistakes, and the fear of making mistakes is a common worry for early career nurses. Being a nurse is a high stakes job and can lead nurses to replay their shifts in the minds at night, check charts at home, and stress impacting their sleep, only increasing the concern of ones ability to operate during their waking hours. An air-force general says that the best way to learn from mistakes is to by taking responsibility for your actions, allowing yourself to learn and get direct feedback, and makew better informed decisions in the future.
Early Career Conflicts/Making Mistakes/Option 2
Making Mistakes
Interacting with others in your field can be challenging, especially with patients and those who may be less understanding of where you're coming from. A social worker explained to us how they handled mistakes by reflecting on interactions, improving empathy, and building stronger relationships with clients over time. Reflecting on the experiences you've had, positive or negatitive may allow you avoid making such mistakes in the future, or even handling the consequences of those mistakes easier.
Early Career Conflicts/Confidence And Communication
Confidence And Communication
A lot of early career nurses struggle to speak up to those in their workplace, such as physicians, senior nurses and families.
A nurse, later in her career writes about how confidence in your own abilities allows you to better communicate with others. Allowing her to communicate calmly and clearly in high pressure, even life or death situations. A journalist was able to learn not only how to communicate, but asking the right questions and listening closely to those answering allowed more information to be shared easier.
Early Career Conflicts/Emotional Turmoil
Emotional Turmoil & Impact
It can be extremeley difficult as a nurse to come into contact with death, suffering, aggression and grief, especially for the first time, or as a new struggle. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. A homicide detective, and a social worker share in the advice of creating emotional boundaries, where what you expierence at work is not personal to them nor a reflection on themselves. They are a bystandar and servant to those they are helping and caring for, it is not a personal grievance but that of the job you are experiencing.
NOT TO BE USEDSPACER EARLY/LATE
Early Career Conflicts/Physical Wear and Tear 1
Physical Wear & Tear
As a nurse you have spent your entire career on your feet, readily helping patients at near break neck speed and demand. It can and has taken a toll on your physical wellbeing. A labor support doula writes about hwo they handled physical wear and tear over long unpredicatable hours. They talk themselves about learning to conserve energy over long hours and understanding the demands placed on them, and how with proper boundary setting and support they were able to manage this physical strain.
Early Career Conflicts/Physical Wear and Tear 2
Physical Wear & Tear
Not just those who work in health fields experience this kind of physical demand. We see an air force general who puts specific time and effort to keep his body at peak condition to manage the demands put on him. Focusing endurance and dscipline to manage his physical health and wellness. We see a combination here of knowing what's ahead and how to better support your work as well as supporting the vessel you need to do your work through, as is the case with the air force general.
Early Career Conflicts/Burnout
Once you are able to build those boundaries, keeping them consistent under repetitive tests of stress, not just a singular moment, is crucial. Adaptation, and adapting to your work and it's stresses is the last and ultimate skill. Knowing when to change your mindsets and doing so when appropriate without losing the boundaries you've placed is the last skill gleamed from these professionals.
Burnout
Almost all career professionals who have shared their experiences in the workforce share ones about overcoming, or falling to burnout. I could simply make the entire project just about this topic, so I'd like to talk about the key take away from many stories, from nurses, social workers, homicide detective, personal injury lawyers, advertising executives and more... Creating emotional boundaries, which help you to not absorb the stress of your enviroment into yourself. Understanding how to conserve energy in your position and manage your workload reasonably.
Early Career Conflicts/System&Technology Changes
System and Tech Changes
There is nothing more upsetting then having your job down to a pattern. Charting and processing patient information is finally one stress you do not think about, all you have to do is focus on your work. Then even that all changes. Systems and technology changing is something many careers have to face, it disrupts workflow and adds what can feel like an unnessecary stress to an already stressed work enviroment. A College proffessor states that he felt simularly frustrated, but with a mindset of change was able to adapt his work and how he conducted his work to better fit the new tools given to him.
Early Career Conflicts/System&Technology Changes 2
System and Tech Changes
Adaptabilitity can be a life saver but that is not all there is to change. In order to adapt to a new system you must give yourself grace that you will struggle and have to relearn. It's simular to learning to ride a bike and then the entire bike changes beneath your feet, you may crash, and that's ok. A pharmacutical sales executive felt simularly. They struggled with the new technology changes, and had to slow down. They had to really take the time to break down each piece of the new system and understand it before they were able to apply it to their work. This kind of patience for yourself is a muscle you probably don't have to excersize much at this point in your career, but just like learning any new skill you have to be ready to just be decent at it for a while before you'll be a master.
Early Career Conflicts/Leadership Burden
This is where that boundary setting comes into place. We see the airforce general able to understand the limit of his power as a person in a leadership role. He can't directly control those he directs, and all he can do is share his knowledge from his experience but allowing those below you to make mistakes on their own behalf and learn, as you did.
Leadership Burden
As a nurse with your experience you are either looked up to by your tenorship alone or you've taken a role as a charge nurse, a preceptor or a mentor in some capacity. It can be a lot of stress put onto you. You are accountable for others and their actions, as well as an entire job of mentoring and making decisions for others. There is a ton of conflict resolution skills needed for this job at this level.
Early Career Conflicts/Moral Distress
Moral Distress
This problem is unique to only late career nurses and comes just from knowing what quality care is, and knowing when your lack of resources, annoying insurance policies and limited staffing are impacting that care. This can create moral injury and stress to nurses. Other late career nurses are able to continue to provide the best care they possibily can in the circumstances they're in. Knowing they can't contorl their surroundings, and doing the best work they can anyways. If your boundaries fall and you become overwhelmed and anxious the circumstances can overwhelm your ability to work.
FINAL Report
Research Question
My work this semester was to investigate the turmoils of nurses in the U.S, and to see if there was a connection between the conflicts nurses face in their early and late careers; how those conflicts differ, and if other career stories can help and aid those in these circumstances.
I have a page dedicated later in this tool to my work cited where all the information that is "assumed" in this tool, such as common struggles in nurses, is researched, defined and backed up. I also used the perplexitity library shared with me by Dr. Leland Hartwell to pull these struggles from stories, to see which out of the many career stories provided touched on the conflicts I saw nurses struggle with. If I had more time I would have liked to talked to real nurses, to make sure my research was broad enough to truly answer the questions nurses need answering.
FINAL Report 2
To answer my question...
I wanted to start first in the career struggles of nurses. I learned nursing as a field is a heavily researched field and a lot of the work of interviewing and monitoring nurses at all career levels has been done for me. So, my goal was to meta-anaylze the research done to discern the top 5 conflicts early, and the top 5 conflicts late career nurses face.
The resilience a nurse is required to have to succeed long term in their careers is incredible. Both mental and physical fortitude is a must for nurses, or they simply will not be able to handle the intense personal stress of the position. As they get older intense physical care is required as well, after decades of an extremeley physically demanding job they have to be ready to care for their bodies in order to keep working at the efficancy expected of them. I also learned I love research. Alongside this internship I am also a researcher for ACE, Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, and as I compiled and researched for both of these amazing opprountinues I realized I am much more excited and capable at research, than I would be as a nurse.
FINAL Report 3
What I learned and how my Views Changed...
At the begining of this term I was considering a future career in nursing. A college local to me offers a postbacc program to become a registered nurse. This felt like something that could be fitting for me. I enjoy serving the public, and helping people learn about their health. This project revealed a lot of challenges I could never have predicted for nurses both young and old.
Work Cited
FINAL Report 4
Thank you
A I appreciated the opprutinity to develop my own research and work under someone I was able to readily ask questions to as I went along. It was a wonderful expierence and has given me a lot of confidence to work on something over an entire term and have it come to a product I am proud of at the end. So thank you, and thank you for reading my research.