The Nurses' Breakroom with Jenny Lytle, RN
Nurses don’t often get to visit the breakroom in real life.
Welcome to The Nurses’ Breakroom with Jenny Lytle, RN — a warm, encouraging space where hospice nurses and caregivers can pause, feel seen, and find practical support for the emotional realities of this work.
Hosted by Jenny Lytle, RN, with over 20 years of hospice experience in case management, on-call, and leadership roles, this podcast offers honest conversations about what it really feels like to care deeply for others while also learning to care for yourself.
Through The Hospice Nurse Well-Being Project and real conversations with hospice nurses, each 5–10 minute episode shares emotional validation, practical self-care tools, nervous system support, and gentle reminders that you do not have to carry it all alone.
Whether you’re a hospice nurse, caregiver, or helping professional, you’ll find encouragement, reflection, and realistic strategies that fit real life.
Because self-care isn’t selfish.
It’s essential if we want to continue to care for others and live our best lives.
stress, self-care, nursing, nurse, healthcare, holistic health, mental health, relax, RN hospice nurse, caregiver stress, compassion fatigue, nurse burnout, self-care for nurses
The Nurses' Breakroom with Jenny Lytle, RN
79. Why Hospice Nurses Feel So Exhausted (It’s Not Just the Workload)
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Are you a hospice nurse feeling more exhausted than your workload alone can explain?
In this episode of The Nurses’ Breakroom, Jenny Lytle, RN, explores emotional exhaustion in hospice nursing—and why it’s not just about caseload, charting, or long shifts.
You’ll learn:
- Why hospice nurses carry more than they realize
- How emotional experiences build up throughout the day
- A simple 30-second awareness practice to help release stress
If you’re experiencing burnout, compassion fatigue, or emotional overload, this episode offers validation and a practical starting point for self-care.
🔗 Get the companion reset practice: https://jennylytle.com/newsletter
If you're feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or like there’s never enough time, I’ve got something just for you! Head to https://selfcareisntselfish.com to grab your FREE copy of my book, Self-Care Isn’t Selfish: The Compassionate Nurse’s Step-by-Step Guide to Personalized Stress Relief. It’s packed with simple, effective strategies to help you prioritize your needs—without guilt—so you can feel energized, focused, and ready to take on the day. Go to https://selfcareisntselfish.com
Feeling stressed? Grab my quick and easy Busy Nurses' Guide to Less Stress for practical stress relief that truly fits into your life! https://www.jennylytle.com/guide
Looking for connection with people who get the stress and self-care struggles of nurses and caregivers? Check out https://thenursesbreakroom.com
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennylytlern/
More ways to connect here: https://linktr.ee/jennylytle
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Nurses Break Room with Jenny Lytle, RN. In the last episode, I shared a little bit about where I've been and why I'm shifting the focus of this podcast more toward the real life experiences of hospice nurses.
And today I want to start with something that I've been hearing over and over again in the conversations that I've been having. And it sounds kind of like this. I'm tired, but I don't know why I'm this tired. And if you've ever felt that, like you're more exhausted than your schedule alone should explain, then this episode's for you. Because here's the thing: it's not just the workload.
The caseload matters and the charting matters and the long days and the on-call shifts. All of that matters and adds up. But what hospice nurses are carrying goes so much deeper than that. Because we're walking into homes where families are overwhelmed. You're holding space for grief and fear and uncertainty. And you're managing symptoms and answering questions and trying to bring calm into situations that sometimes feel anything but calm. And often you're doing that multiple times a day.
And one of the nurses that I spoke with shared that the hardest part of her work wasn't death. And that's what a lot of non-hospice people think it is, but it's the emotional connection that we form with patients and families.
Another one said that the most exhausting moments weren't even the deaths themselves, but really the witnessing the love between people and the weight of what they're going through. And that's something that stays with you, even if you don't realize it right away.
So here's something that I want you to consider. You're not just doing tasks, you're absorbing these experiences. Every visit, every conversation, every difficult moment, it doesn't just end when you walk out the door. And if you're someone who cares deeply, like most hospice nurses do, that emotional energy, it has to go somewhere.
But most of us were never taught how to process it. We were taught how to care for patients, but not how to care for ourselves after caring for those patients. So instead, we carry it. We carry it into the car and into the next visit, even when we try not to, and we carry it home. And then we wonder why we feel so drained.
And here's one small shift that you can try:
At the end of your day, or even between visits, if you can, take just 30 seconds and ask yourself what am I still holding on to from that last visit? And it's not about fixing it or analyzing it, it's just noticing it.
Because awareness is the first step in releasing that.
And if this is something that you've been feeling, I share a really simple end of shift reset practice in this week's newsletter that you can try, even on your busiest days.
And you can find the link for that in the show notes. Um, or you can go to jennylytle.com/newsletter.
And as we wrap up today, I just want to remind you: if you're feeling more tired than you think you should, there's nothing wrong with you. It's not that you're lazy, it's not that you're not cut out for this, you're not weak, you're not doing it wrong. You're just carrying a lot. And we're going to start talking more openly about that here and about ways to handle that.
And until next time, remember self-care isn't selfish. It's essential if we want to continue to care for others and live our best lives. Have a great week.