Is anyone else a nurse? How do you deal with the worry that you will make a mistake. I do check things repeatedly and am trying to cut down. I just worry that because of this I have so much anxiety about my job and that i shouldn’t be a nurse anymore.

I’m a nurse ?! I have struggled intensely with this very issue. I have specific fears of giving my patient sepsis and of medication errors. Here’s what has helped me: ?Realizing that the risk of me making an error is NO DIFFERENT than anyone else. OCD likes to single us out and make us feel alone and like we are the worst one! This is untrue and you have the exact same risk of making a mistake as any other nurse in practice. ?Even if an error did occur, we cannot expect the most catastrophic outcome to occur My OCD likes to jump immediately to the patient dying. However, for many errors, there body can compensate and the patient will be unharmed. ?Do specific ERP about those fears which bother you the most. I have scripts that I have listened to hundreds of times to help me get over the fear of giving my patient a bloodstream infection. Other things that helped: -Getting on 200mg Zoloft and 2mg Abilify - Switching only to day shift and not working any overtime - planning specific snacks at 10a and 4pm All in all, I did have to take 2 months of medical leave and went to a partial hospitalization program in order to get my OCD under control. You may not need this severe of an intervention but I had stopped eating and sleeping and basically was in crisis mode before I started getting therapy.

I’m not a nurse but I often worry about making mistakes at work. That’s a price I’m willing to pay as someone with OCD who has an important job. Next time you have that fear, instead of fighting it with compulsions, try to say “I’m a nurse. I’m not going to stop being a nurse. So you can shout all you want, OCD, but I’m going to do what I love whether you are yelling or not.” Then keep right on working.