Everyday Religion of Nurses: Embodied Spiritual Practice and Burnout Prevention
Henry Thompson, Student, Boston University School of
Theology
Long hours, physical and emotional exhaustion, low pay, and too much bureaucracy: for some nurses, each day on the job becomes such a burden that staying with the profession no longer makes sense. My paper will examine the phenomenon of nursing burnout as a spiritual crisis, using sociologist Nancy Ammerman’s theoretical framework of “everyday” religion. By this she means the extension of religion’s observable purview beyond physical institutional spaces or belief-based measurements. At any place or time, religion may be identified within seemingly mundane patterns of action (practices) undertaken with intention and given spiritual meaning by the actor. Ammerman suggests that the interactions of physical bodies in a nurse-patient encounter represent a complex mix of the sacred and the profane. How do nurses employ everyday, embodied spiritual practices and a “sensibility” for the sacred that prevent or catalyze burnout?
Allnurses.com provides a unique setting in which nurses and nursing students discuss publicly yet intimately the hardships and joys of the profession, providing encouragement and support. During my current ethnographic observation in this virtual community, I have identified several nurse-authors who tell burnout stories. In addition to these narratives, I will analyze discussions about spiritual practices in the workplace. By re-framing the discourse in terms of an individual nurse’s everyday sense of religion and spirituality, my research will suggest new strategies for burnout prevention.
Long hours, physical and emotional exhaustion, low pay, and too much bureaucracy: for some nurses, each day on the job becomes such a burden that staying with the profession no longer makes sense. My paper will examine the phenomenon of nursing burnout as a spiritual crisis, using sociologist Nancy Ammerman’s theoretical framework of “everyday” religion. By this she means the extension of religion’s observable purview beyond physical institutional spaces or belief-based measurements. At any place or time, religion may be identified within seemingly mundane patterns of action (practices) undertaken with intention and given spiritual meaning by the actor. Ammerman suggests that the interactions of physical bodies in a nurse-patient encounter represent a complex mix of the sacred and the profane. How do nurses employ everyday, embodied spiritual practices and a “sensibility” for the sacred that prevent or catalyze burnout?
Allnurses.com provides a unique setting in which nurses and nursing students discuss publicly yet intimately the hardships and joys of the profession, providing encouragement and support. During my current ethnographic observation in this virtual community, I have identified several nurse-authors who tell burnout stories. In addition to these narratives, I will analyze discussions about spiritual practices in the workplace. By re-framing the discourse in terms of an individual nurse’s everyday sense of religion and spirituality, my research will suggest new strategies for burnout prevention.