The 5 Minute Debrief

One thing I’ve seen nurses struggle with throughout my career is leaving work at work. We tend to carry the stress, anger, sorrow, and all the other junk with us into our homes and even to our days off. If we are not careful this can affect nearly every aspect of our lives.

For this reason. I recently shared a post talking about 5 ways to leave work at work. I followed with a post sharing an additional 7 ways to leave work at work. One of the things I shared in these posts was what I call the 5 Minute Debrief.

The idea with the 5 Minute Debrief is to get some of the junk out of your head, write it down, and then move on. Here’s how it works. The 5 Minute Debrief consists of 3 statements.

Things I did well today

Here’s the deal. Even on your worst day, there were still things that you did well. Take some time to celebrate that. If you don’t, then it can be really easy to focus only on the things that didn’t go well. Write down a few things that you did well. It doesn’t have to be long. Just a few short notes.

Things I could have done better today

Here is where you are going to think about the things that didn’t go so well. Consider things that you could have done better. I’m not suggesting that you agonize over conversations where you think you could have said something different or better. Just name some concrete things that you could have done better.

Write it down, learn any lessons that need to be learned from it, then let it go.

Things I need to look up before my next shift

In some cases there are things that you really do need to look up before your next shift. Maybe it’s a new medicine or a diagnosis you’ve never heard of. Maybe it’s something you wrote down in the second statement. Whatever it is, write it down.

The point of this is to put these things down so that you don’t go home thinking about them. If you’re like me, you’ll probably end up lying in bed thinking about these things. Writing them down, and deciding to look into them later, can get them out of your head so that you can be present with your family and so that you can sleep.

In some cases you might not really need to look them up. However, in most cases these will be things that you really do need to look up. After you’ve written them down, set the paper aside and plan to come back to it sometime later, before your next shift.

That’s it

While this is called he 5 minute debrief, it may take longer than that, sometimes. The real point is that it shouldn’t take long. Take as long as you need to complete it, but don’t drag it on forever.

FREE Download

To help with this, I’ve developed this free PDF version of the 5 Minute Debrief. Download it, print it, and have it ready to go when you need it.