"As an emergency nurse, I was working a night shift during the winter where a bus accident brought in 10 critically injured patients on top of the standard winter visits to an ER. When we received the call that the ambulances would be showing up, I went into immediate triage mode with our current patients. This mode continued when the accident victims arrived as well and I prioritized those with the most traumatic injuries first and worked down the line. I great piece of advice I got early in my career was that I am only one person who can only focus on one thing at a time. In these situations, this sage advice keeps me focused on the patient in front of me and not letting my mind wander to the other patients."

"Working my way through nursing school, I worked a near full-time job and was attending classes. To try and finish a semester early, I packed 19 credits in my final two semesters and this was a stressful time for me. While not having a lot of time for family and friends, I made sure to take care of myself by eating healthy when tempted not to and still get a good amount of sleep each night. By taking care of myself, my daily stress was lessened and much more manageable when it could've been easy to live off of fast food and caffeine with many sleepless nights."

"In my time working as a home health nurse, I spent a lot of time on the road. Winters were particularly tough with high numbers of illnesses coupled with bad driving weather. One Sunday, we had a large dumping of snow and I had a full patient load the next day. As I hit the road on Monday morning, I received several emergent calls for visits that day as I was realizing the driving conditions would be bad. Knowing I would have a large patient load that day and driving conditions were poor, I contacted my supervisor to let them know of the situation. He approved me to work the hours that I needed to that day safely and responsibly. In that situation, I took my time on the roads and made a plan for patient visits that would be efficient. By communicating and making a plan, the daywas very manageable."

"By far the most stressful situation I have ever dealt with took place while I was working as a technician in the emergency department at County Hospital. You may or may not remember seeing this on the news, but there was a day when we had a Code Silver, or a warning for an active shooter because there was a family member who was extremely upset over a bad outcome and had come in threatening to shoot everyone. Because the ED was extremely busy that day, we had patients in beds in all empty spaces we could find, so beds were essentially lining the hallways. Once the Code Silver was called, we had to immediately get these patients moved to a secure location. Doing this while not knowing if a shooter was right around the corner was terrifying, and the hardest part was remaining calm for the patients."

"My most stressful situation was while working on a step-down unit. Unfortunately, we were short-staffed that day, and so I had 2 additional patients compared to what a typical workload would be like. I knew from my morning report that the day would be very busy due to patients' high acuity levels and multiple patients needing blood transfusions, so I quickly began my morning assessments. I immediately noted new abnormalities on a patient's assessment that were concerning for stroke. This patient became my immediate priority. I spoke with my charge nurse at once and called a code stroke. I had learned strong reporting skills over the years and was able to give a brief but thorough report to my charge nurse on my other patients and she assumed the primary nurse of those patients while I cared for the patient who was actively displaying new signs of a stroke. Once I was able to begin medication for the patient and transfer her to ICU, I was then able to resume full care of my other patients. It was a stressful situation, but my years of nursing experience had prepared me for it, and my team and I were able to work well together to provide all the necessary care needed as quickly and safely as possible."